"Almost 10% of Men": GUR Head Names the Price of Another 18 Months of War for Russia

Oleh Hovkun, Head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, gave a quantitative assessment in an interview with the British publication The Times, as cited by RBC-Ukraine, of how much more the Russian army will lose if the fighting continues for a year and a half. According to his calculations, an additional 18 months of combat operations would result in 765,800 Russian casualties — of which, in the GUR head's assessment, 459,480 would be killed and 306,320 wounded. These figures were announced against the backdrop of data from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces indicating that Russia's cumulative losses already approach 1.5 million people.

Loss Forecast for the Next Year and a Half

The key point of Hovkun's statement is not a retrospective count, but an extrapolation of the current rate of losses over an 18-month horizon. The total figure of 765,800 people, he says, breaks down into two components: about 459,480 killed and about 306,320 wounded. Thus, under this model, there are roughly two wounded for every one killed. Experts cited by Ukrainian media emphasise that such rates are being maintained while the Kremlin replenishes its army's ranks, in particular, with prisoners and foreign military personnel, which in itself points to a shortage of voluntary recruitment.

Scale in the Context of Russia's Male Population

The most resonant conclusion from Hovkun concerns the demographic scale. If the projected 765,800 people are added to the current estimate of losses, it turns out that Russia will lose nearly 10% of its male population aged 25–49 — that is, the main working-age and conscription cohort. It is precisely this formulation with the age restriction that appears in the extended version of the statement and, in essence, defines its analytical weight: the point is not about "all men in the country," but about a specific demographic segment that is critically important both for the economy and for further mobilisation capacity.

Current Losses and Sources of Army Replenishment

To understand the scale of the forecast, it is important to start from the baseline reference point. According to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as of 11 August, Russia's losses in the war against Ukraine amount to 1,460,400 killed and wounded. This means that the model proposed by the GUR effectively assumes that cumulative losses will grow from 1.46 million to a level approaching more than two million people, provided that combat operations continue at the current pace for another 18 months. The Ukrainian side notes that maintaining such a pace is possible only by drawing on contingents that do not belong to regular voluntary recruitment.

Contradictory Data

Fact-checking reveals two significant caveats. The first concerns the wording "10% of the male population": in the headline versions of several publications the age restriction (25–49 years) is omitted, which may create the impression that the figure refers to a tenth of all men in the country regardless of age; meanwhile, in the extended text Hovkun explicitly specifies the age cohort, and it is this version that is correct. The second caveat concerns the very nature of the figures: all the values cited are estimates by Ukrainian military intelligence and the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces; they have not been verified by independent international observers and, by definition, cannot be precisely confirmed or refuted due to the lack of transparent statistics from the Russian side. Some publications (for example, Fakty and Cursorinfo) additionally interpret the statement as indicating that Russia will exhaust its resource base for waging war by 2028 and that there is "desperation" in the Russian leadership; however, such conclusions go beyond Hovkun's direct numerical claims and represent editorial interpretation.

What This Means for the Course of the War

The totality of the GUR head's statements and the related assessments indicates that the Ukrainian side views the dynamics of losses as a strategic factor capable of changing the course of the conflict: if the current rates are maintained, Russia, according to these calculations, may exhaust its demographic and resource reserves for continuing the war within a horizon of up to 2028. At the same time, it is emphasised that such forecasts remain one-sided intelligence estimates and should be read with the above caveats regarding verification and the precise demographic wording in mind.