Russia's losses in Ukraine rise faster than ever as US pushes for peace deal
www.bbc.com
A steep rise in soldiers' obituaries is documented by the BBC as part of its work in counting Russian war losses.

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Overall, the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia’s side in Ukraine.

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The real death toll is believed to be much higher, and military experts we have consulted believe our analysis of cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries might represent 45-65% of the total.

That would put the number of Russian deaths at between 243,000 and 352,000.

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In October [2025], when a planned second Russia-US summit was eventually shelved, and then in November, when the US presented a 28-point peace proposal, an average of 322 obituaries were published per day - twice the average in 2024.

It is difficult to put increased Russian losses down to any one factor, but the Kremlin sees territorial gains as a way of influencing negotiations with the US in its favour: Putin aide Yuri Ushakov stressed recently that “recent successes” had had a positive impact.

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  • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
    10·
    3 days ago

    Wow… the gain of territory equivalent to a 40min walk over a whole year and at the cost of more than 100k Russian men is the “fastest growing loss” for years… who would have thought that underequiped and untrained meat wave tactics on foot or in golf carts are bad for the meat.

  • shadowtofu@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    Interesting. According to the daily numbers published by the AFU, the average daily personnel losses were ~1560/day in December 2024, and ~1130/day in December 2025. This BBC analysis (which does not explicitly reference AFU) explicitly refers to people killed, whereas the AFU also counts (some) wounded soldiers. This could imply that the survival chances for Russian soldiers have decreased (attacks are more deadly)

    • The_v@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Instead of a injured/dead ratio of around 1:10 of the casualties. Its been 1:3 this year. That is quite a brutal statistic.

      Personally I think it’s because of the lack of armor on the battlefield for Russia. They were large moving targets and Ukraine absolutely demolished them. However the troops inside had better chances of surviving a direct hit with only being wounded due to the protection and faster evacuation.