The figure is staggering: British intelligence has released the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine
28 May 12:14
The Russian army has lost nearly 500,000 personnel killed in action since the start of the war in Ukraine, said Anne Keist-Butler, director of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
“Putin is rolling back on the battlefield, and new intelligence data shows that nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the conflict,” she said on Sky News.
As The Guardian notes, this is the first time a high-ranking British official has confirmed the UK’s assessment of Russian losses in Ukraine, made in the fifth year of the aggression. Previously, Western analysts had estimated the number of Russian soldiers and officers killed in the war at 325,000. In particular, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) cited such figures as of January 2026. According to its data, the total losses of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine have reached 1.198 million people.
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CSIS analysts called these figures “unprecedented,” emphasizing that no major country has suffered such losses since World War II. The roll call of those killed in the war, maintained by “Mediazona” and the “BBC,” already includes at least 221,206 Russians.
The day before, Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky, commander of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, told Reuters that the Russian army is exhausted due to heavy losses and is unable to achieve major breakthroughs.
According to him, if the Ukrainian Armed Forces manage to increase and sustain the pace of their offensive over the next few months, they will be able to seize the initiative on the front lines and force Russia to abandon its plans to capture the part of the Donetsk region that remains under Ukrainian control.
“I believe that the next six to nine months will be a turning point [in the war]. To be more precise, I believe that the next six months are the most critical,” Biletsky said.
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