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Three Years, a Million Casualties—And Russia Gains Just 1.45% of Ukraine
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![Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko]( "Photo of Dariia Mykhailenko")
Russia’s latest gains on the battlefield remain limited despite the increased tempo of its operations, according to new assessments of territorial control and military losses.
Analysts note that after nearly three years of full-scale war, Moscow has seized only about 1.45% more of Ukraine’s land—an area home to roughly the same share of its pre-invasion population. No major Ukrainian city has fallen in that time, according to The Economist on December 2.
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Even in Pokrovsk, a city of just 61,000 residents before the invasion, Russian forces have been fighting for more than 14 months. The Institute for the Study of War says the city still has not been fully captured, as reported by The Economist.
“If, for example, Russia is to gain full control of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk, it needs to conquer a further 20,345 square kilometres, or 1,453 LAXs. Even at the recent rate, that would take until May 2028,“ experts note.
These advances have come at extraordinary human cost. Estimates suggest that between 1 million and 1.35 million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded so far—numbers that rival or exceed total US battlefield casualties in the Second World War.
“Perhaps 1% of Russia’s pre-war male population of fighting age has died in Ukraine of fighting age has died in Ukraine,” the analysis suggests.
According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 100,000 Russian troops were killed in just the first half of 2025, The Economist reported.
Earlier, former Russian Ground Forces commander Vladimir Chirkin publicly criticized Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying the country entered the war unprepared yet again.
