Russia Now Loses as Many Troops in One Month in Ukraine as the USSR Did in 10 Years in Afghanistan

The Ukrainian army recorded one of its highest figures to date in December 2025: 35,000 irrecoverable Russian losses in a single month, most of them killed by drones. In the final calendar quarter of 2025 alone, total Russian military losses reached 100,000. Over the course of the year, they exceeded 400,000.

While these figures may seem modest when compared to World War II, they are staggering in the context of any other conflict over the past 80 years. Over nearly four years of full-scale war, Russia has lost 1.2 million soldiers in Ukraine—and has managed to replace that number through repeated mobilization efforts.

These figures represent both the killed and the wounded. However, UNITED24 Media’s own sources suggest that the proportion of those killed increases every year, and now makes up more than half of the total losses.

Perhaps most telling for policymakers in democratic societies is the silence from Russian society: one million men have not returned home, yet there are no protests or public calls for accountability in Moscow.

This is all the more striking, given that one of the factors that led to the end of the Soviet-Afghan War was public pressure. The Soviet Union lost as many—if not more—troops in 10 years in Afghanistan as Russia is now losing in just a single month in Ukraine. Russia’s annual losses are ten times greater; its total losses are 30 times greater. And yet—silence.

The war in Afghanistan

Moscow began its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and did not withdraw until a decade later, in 1989. For Soviet families, the war became a nightmare: young men were drafted from across all the republics, and parents did everything they could to ensure their sons were sent anywhere but Afghanistan.

The total losses at the time shocked society. Estimates vary, but Washington puts the number of Soviet casualties at 33,000 to 38,000 Soviet troops killed or wounded—a third of them fatalities. The most commonly cited number was around 14,500 Soviet soldiers killed.

The Afghan war ended for a mix of economic, geopolitical, and military reasons—but public pressure was also a key factor. Mothers, fathers, and wives protested government actions and demanded their loved ones be brought home. Afghanistan quickly ceased to be a “quick, victorious war,” and over time became a serious liability for the Soviet leadership.

That lesson was not forgotten in the modern Russian Kremlin: public pressure is a dangerous threat. For example, Russia has only once announced a partial mobilization during the war with Ukraine—and it was halted quickly to avoid unrest. Recruitment is now conducted through aggressive campaigns, large cash incentives, conscription from prisons, and forced mobilization in regions where the population has little political voice.

But the story speaks for itself: the losses are incomparable.

• Russia now loses as many troops in a single month in Ukraine as it did during an entire decade in Afghanistan—and it continues to sustain these losses year after year.

• Across two Chechen wars, official Russian fatalities totaled around 12,000; unofficial estimates go as high as 40,000. That too is equivalent to the number of Russians lost in just one month of war in Ukraine today.

In total, Russia’s losses—estimated at 1.2 million soldiers—now exceed the wartime deaths of most countries in World War II. Napoleon lost about the same number over nearly 20 years of warfare. Russia is losing troops by the hundreds of thousands. And still, there is no resistance from society.

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