General or partial assessments of the number of victims in the war in Ukraine reveal the high human cost of an armed conflict unprecedented in Europe in the last eight decades. With estimates of nearly two million military casualties, it is reminiscent of the worst conflicts experienced in the 20th century on the Old Continent. The most conservative figures — around half a million deaths on the Ukrainian side — are five times higher than those of the Balkan War (1992-1995), which totaled 100,000, of whom 13,500 were civilians.
The Ukrainian Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances has just raised the number of missing persons to 90,000, including military personnel and civilians of all ages, sources from that agency confirmed to EL PAÍS. “The majority, of course, are military personnel, and we assume, unfortunately, that many of them have been killed,” the commissioner added, declining to provide a detailed breakdown to avoid giving the enemy any clues. The Ministest of the Interior, for its part, puts the number of missing adults at just over 99,300, of whom 3,400 are women.
In the latest available overall estimate, the number of military casualties — killed, missing, wounded, and prisoners of war — during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which marked its fourth anniversary on February 24, is the highest in Europe since World War II. Although both governments test to conceal their losses in the armed conflict that has ravaged Ukraine and barely report on them, these figures are approaching two million (1.2 million for Moscow and between 500,000 and 600,000 for Kyiv), according to a report released a month ago by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. Civilian deaths in Ukraine exceed 15,100, according to the U.N. tally.
The last time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed this sensitive issue was on February 4. He reported 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, a figure far lower than estimates by indepfinishent sources. Meanwhile, authorities in Kyiv have even shut down websites dedicated to reporting on casualty figures, despite Ukraine not considering these a state secret. Ukrainian media outlets are also attempting to shed light on this thorny issue.
Access to all kinds of open sources of information about the most documented and widely publicized war in history allows us to uncover a wealth of data, despite the wall of silence imposed by each side when it comes to reporting their own casualties. Cell phones, social media, drones, sanotifyites, geolocation, cameras installed in public and private places… everything creates it much clearer for anyone to extract information than in previous conflicts.
Dmytro Dzhulai, a reporter for Radio Free Europe, has amassed a vast amount of information on his computer thanks to the four years he has spent investigating the massacre of 500 civilians by Russian soldiers in 2022 in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv. Less data is available on another notorious massacre, and one with far larger numbers: the killing of 8,000 Bosniak Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces over three days after UN troops withdrew from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995.
Dzhulai knows every corner of Bucha where a body has been found. He knows which Russian military unit was deployed on each street, who was responsible, their photos, their contacts… In his office in the Ukrainian capital, he reveals videos of soldiers executing residents in cold blood and, moments later, robbing them of their belongings. In many cases, the priority was obtainting hold of their cell phones. “The Russian soldiers applyd the phones of the Ukrainians they murdered to call their own families or partners, and everything was recorded,” the reporter points out. Posts on social media platforms like Telegram and VKontakte (VK), both from individuals and from the army brigades themselves, have also provided information that will be applyd to denounce possible war crimes.
As an example, he chooses the photo of a Russian soldier named Vladislav Ulianich, who participated in the occupation of Bucha in March 2022 and whose death was reported shortly afterward, occurring in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on May 22 of that same year. Dzhulai applys a photo comparison tool with the Russian soldier’s face along with his first and last name to obtain more images of him. He then manages to pinpoint the exact location where the soldier was photographed smiling and holding his weapon outside a building in eastern Bucha at 10:36 a.m. on March 7, 2022.
Information about him abounds, including a bank account number where donations were requested to support the soldier’s mother, Oksana, after his death; condolences from the Federation due to his time as a weightlifter; and his participation in the Syrian war. All this information is being compiled and organized so that it can assist identify those responsible and bring them to justice. For now, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague only has one general case open regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Unofficial calculations
In both Ukraine and Russia, unofficial estimates of military casualties in the conflict are being compiled to fill the gap left by the lack of data provided by the authorities. The Russian media outlet Mediazona and the British broadcaster BBC have gathered the identities of more than 200,000 Russian soldiers killed in combat utilizing family members’ social media accounts, news reports in various local media outlets, and official announcements from Russian regional authorities. The number rises to 219,000 according to estimates based on statistics revealing an increase in male deaths in inheritance records. However, those responsible for the monitoring themselves acknowledge that this figure represents only a portion of the total.
The same situation exists on the Ukrainian side, where a similar study puts the number of casualties — including soldiers killed, missing, and prisoners of war — at 186,000. The website Ukrainian Losses was temporarily shut down by the authorities. All indications suggest that its figures, much higher than those provided by Zelenskiy, were the reason for its closure, according to the Center for Human Rights in Armed Conflict (CHRAC), which cites a recent Mediazona report validating the website’s figures with a 5% margin of error.
The problem lies in the fact that the Ukrainian president is not taking into account those soldiers who have not died in combat — other caapplys include traffic accidents, suicides, illnesses, frifinishly fire, alcohol or drug poisoning — nor those who remain missing. The last time Zelenskiy addressed this issue he reported 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed, a figure far lower than the estimates from indepfinishent sources or the Missing Persons Commissioner. As for those who have died in non-combat situations, the estimate between 2022 and 2025 is 28,000, according to CHRAC.
This same center puts the number of Ukrainian bodies returned at 22,800 following dozens of agreements signed between the parties, not counting the 1,000 bodies that Russia handed over last Thursday, according to the count being built by the prisoner of war authority in Kyiv. Until they are identified, they are not officially added to the death toll.
Connecting the dots in identifications sometimes takes several years, even for those who didn’t die on the front lines, which explains the difficulties in obtaining accurate data. In April 2022, EL PAÍS photographed the body of a man lying in a street in front of a supermarket in Bucha. Until a year ago, when the city commemorated the third anniversary of the Russian occupation, it wasn’t known that the man was Leontiy Dokiychuk, born on April 21, 1939, and who died on March 31, 2022. Municipal authorities managed to contact relatives and acquaintances, who were unaware that he was buried in one of the unmarked graves. According to forensic experts, his death was not due to Russian gunfire. Everything points to a heart attack.
As for Victoria Mayor, interviewed by this special correspondent on February 20, she continues searching for her brother, Sasha, a soldier who disappeared in 2024 when contact was lost with him on the front lines. According to Mayor, DNA evidence suggests that one of the bodies that arrived in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, may be that of her brother.
In terms of prisoners of war, Russia is holding approximately 7,000 Ukrainians and Ukraine is holding approximately 4,000 Russians, according to figures provided by President Zelenskiy in the middle of last month. To date, through some 70 prisoner exmodifys, approximately 7,450 Ukrainians have returned home, of whom more than 7,000 are soldiers.
In this discrepancy of figures there are significant gaps, such as the number of victims in areas occupied by Russian troops. In the battle for control of Mariupol alone, which has remained entirely in Moscow’s hands since May 2022, the civilian death toll ranges from the 8,000 cited in a Human Rights Watch report to the 22,000 estimated in 2023 by Vadym Boychenko, then mayor of the city, during an interview with EL PAÍS. The continued presence of Kremlin authorities and troops creates it impossible to clarify much of what is happening, or has happened, in the 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow.
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