On the morning of September 9, on the 1659th day of the full-scale war, the total combat losses of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, according to the assessment of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, crossed the mark of 1.5 million killed and wounded. This is reported by RBC-Ukraine, citing an official statement from Ukrainian command. The General Staff emphasizes that these are the largest losses the Russian army has suffered in a single conflict since World War II, and that the figure exceeds the combined losses of the Soviet and Russian armies in all wars and armed conflicts of the second half of the 20th and the early 21st century taken together.
Historical scale: comparison with Afghanistan and Chechnya
To illustrate the point, Ukrainian command provides two comparisons. According to its data, current Russian losses are 100 times greater than the USSR's losses in Afghanistan over ten years of war and 125 times greater than the officially acknowledged losses of Russian occupiers in the First and Second Chechen campaigns. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces also reminds that "behind every accounted unit of Russian losses stands a specific occupier who came with weapons onto Ukrainian soil, and the titanic daily joint work of the Defense Forces of Ukraine and the entire Ukrainian people."
Dynamics and previous data snapshots
The 1.5 million mark became a logical continuation of a growing trend: in previous daily briefings of the General Staff, it was reported that the figure was approaching this threshold with an increase of around 1,400 losses per day. Thus, crossing the symbolic boundary of 1.5 million occurred against the backdrop of a steady rate of losses that the Ukrainian side has been recording throughout the entire period of the war.
Contradictory data
It is important to note that all the figures provided are a one-sided assessment by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and are not confirmed by independent international fact-checking; the Russian side does not publish its own losses in a comparable volume. In addition, some sources show a minor inconsistency in wording: earlier briefings described the losses as "approaching 1.5 million," whereas the current statement records that they have already been exceeded. This reflects not a discrepancy in methodology, but a chronological difference between successive daily data snapshots.
Context: what this means
Regardless of the accuracy of individual figures, the stated order of magnitude underscores the exceptional duration and intensity of the conflict. The Ukrainian side uses these data to outline the strategic context: according to its assessment, the Russian army has already exhausted its cumulative "loss experience" of all its armed conflicts of recent decades, concentrating it in a single confrontation with Ukraine.
