Nearly 2 million navy casualties in Ukraine conflict, reviews finds – with Putin’s forces bearing brunt of losses | EUROtoday

The variety of troopers killed, injured or lacking on either side of Russia’s conflict on Ukraine may hit two million by the spring, a report has warned – with Russia struggling the most important variety of troop deaths recorded for any main energy in any battle because the Second World War.

The research by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies revealed the gradual, lethal grind of the battle, and comes earlier than the fourth anniversary of the Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

The report mentioned Russia suffered 1.2 million casualties, together with as much as 325,000 troop deaths, between February 2022 and December 2025. “No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,” the authors said.

It estimated that Ukraine, with its smaller army and population, had suffered between 500,000 to 600,000 military casualties, including up to 140,000 deaths.

The figures have been described as unreliable by the Russia, as the country’s advance in Ukraine remains in a grinding war of attrition. Analysts say that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in no rush to find a settlement, despite his army’s difficulties on the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line.

Putin has repeatedly said Russia will take all of Ukraine’s Donbas region, of which Moscow’s forces control 90 per cent, by force unless Kyiv gives it up in a peace deal.

This weekend, a third round of negotiations between the two countries, brokered by the US, will take place aimed at ending the war.

US secretary Marco Rubio said active work was underway to reconcile the territorial issue of Donetsk in the Donbas, describing the disagreement as a key remaining issue that is “very troublesome” to resolve.

Kyiv has said it will not gift Russia territory that Moscow has failed to win on the battlefield.

“It’s nonetheless a bridge we now have to cross. It’s nonetheless a niche, however a minimum of we have been in a position to slender down the problem set one central one, and it’ll in all probability be a really troublesome one,” Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

In Ukraine on Wednesday, Russian strikes killed a couple near Kyiv and hammered the southern city of Odesa, a day after a drone attack killed five people on a passenger train.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the attacks. “The strike hit a residential neighborhood, with no military targets anywhere nearby,” the Ukrainian leader wrote on social media. “We will respond fairly to Russia for this and other similar attacks.”

Several buildings sustained damage in the attacks on Odesa, though no casualties were reported. Several fires are said to have broken out, with emergency crews extinguishing a major fire at a construction and architecture college in the city.

Emergency services said that religious sites including a monastery were damaged in the bombing.

Energy infrastructure has continued to be targeted with deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba saying that the strike damaged manufacturing facilities, a locomotive and hangars, and sparked a fire that was being extinguished.

Hundreds of 1000’s of residents already stay with out energy following relentless assaults on infrastructure throughout one of many nation’s coldest winters on report.

Ukraine’s Sea Ports Authority mentioned the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi got here beneath assault however continued working usually.

Three folks had been harm within the assault that additionally broken port infrastructure, regional governor Oleh Kiper mentioned on Telegram on Wednesday. A residential constructing and buildings within the neighborhood of an Orthodox monastery had been additionally broken, he added.