KYIV — Russia lost 281,550 soldiers in Ukraine in the first eight months of this year, according to a document that Ukrainian intelligence says contained leaked Russian data.

The list, published Oct. 6, shows an astonishing level of losses for minimal battlefield gains. It says that 86,744 Russians were killed, 33,966 are missing, 158,529 were wounded and 2,311 were captured.

Russian media website Mediazona was skeptical about some of the numbers. Together with the BBC, it is conducting a project of identifying Russians killed in action since the war started, and so far has named more than 134,000. The difficulty in naming lost soldiers means the numbers will be lower than a broad estimate of casualties.

Mediazona thought that the more than 5,000 Russians killed on the front line along the Dnieper River was too high, but the Ukrainian military said some Russian forces from the that region were redeployed to eastern Ukraine, which has seen some of the bloodiest fighting so far this year.

International open intelligence group Frontelligence Insight told POLITICO the leaked document appears to be fairly accurate and corresponds to the group’s own estimates.

“The figures we had at that time closely align with those in the document, suggesting the published number falls within the expected range,” it said.

Other online intelligence groups studying the war concur.

The statistics highlight the wasteful way the Kremlin is fighting the war and the impact of the drone warfare that Ukrainian forces are conducting against the Russians.

“Due to the lack of a normal system of evacuating the wounded from the battlefield, there are only 1.3 wounded soldiers per one dead. This signals a low level of survival of the wounded, who are poorly trained in tactical medicine and are usually abandoned without help after injury,” says the report. It was prepared by the Ukrainian military intelligence hotline called “I want to live,” aimed at Russian troops willing to surrender, and accompanies the Russian data.

In other wars, the ratio of killed to wounded is closer to 1-to-3, underlining that Russia is not rescuing its soldiers.

Overall, Russian losses are estimated at over 1 million dead, wounded and missing since the Kremlin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian General Staff has reported. It calculates that Russia loses about 1,000 soldiers a day.

In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated that over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war and 390,000 were wounded.

Ukraine’s numbers are lower because it has largely been on the defense, while attackers tend to suffer higher casualties. Ukraine has also made more of an effort to rescue and treat its wounded soldiers.

“Regarding losses … Russian casualties are three times greater than ours,” Zelenskyy said during a meeting with journalists in August.

Russia inches forward

Those vast numbers of dead and wounded soldiers are the result of Russia continuing to press forward on multiple points of the front line. That strategy has succeeded in stretching Ukrainian forces thin.

“This year, the front line has increased by about 200 kilometers. In addition, we still have 2,400 kilometers where there are no combat operations, but we must also keep our troops there,” Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top army commander, told journalists in Kyiv at the end of September.

“As for the general situation on the front, it remains difficult. The enemy continues to advance on the main directions, in particular Pokrovsk and Dobropillia directions. In other directions, the situation is characterized by low-intensity combat operations. In general, the situation is under our control,” Syrskyi said.

In a bid to boost numbers, recruitment ads have flooded Ukrainian streets, media and even sent as messages to people’s mobile phones.

Russia is also facing its own troubles. Some regions pay recruits a sign-up bonus of as much as 2.5 million rubles (€26,000), but reports on the death rate and awful conditions are filtering through to Russia, making recruitment difficult.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, estimated that Russia is signing up an average of 31,600 soldiers a month, but is suffering an average of 35,193 casualties per month.

“Russian forces appear able and willing to sustain these casualty rates despite achieving limited tactical advances,” ISW concluded.

Hunting for new recruits

Russia’s rising recruitment efforts in Africa and the Middle East also suggest it’s finding it harder to sign up new soldiers at home. Frontelligence Insight has obtained several thousand records with personal details of African and Middle Eastern citizens fighting for Russia in Ukraine, and has seen a significant uptick in activity.

“For example, one dataset of 1,045 sign-up records shows that between 2023 and 2024, 394 people from Africa and the Middle East signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense, while in just the first half of 2025, 651 contracts were recorded — nearly double the previous pace,” Frontelligence Insight said.

Russian efforts to recruit abroad have focused on economically disadvantaged countries. Recruits are often lured with promises of life-changing money, sometimes equivalent to nearly a decade of average local wages, as well as assurances (often fraudulent) of noncombat roles such as cooks, the group said.

Overall, Frontelligence Insight analytics see a major trend across the Russian army: rising sign-up bonuses, expanded recruitment from those held in pretrial detention and growing pressure on conscripts to sign contracts with the Russian defense ministry and be sent into Ukraine.

“All of this suggests that Russia is struggling to sustain recruitment via traditional monetary methods. If this trend continues, the Kremlin will face a choice between resorting to drastic measures such as broader mobilization or confronting the same manpower shortages that have been a problem for Ukraine’s military for the past two years,” the analysts said.

Once in Ukraine, those Russian troops face deadly conditions. Ukrainian drones hunt individual soldiers, artillery and rockets hit supply lines and using armored vehicles is now rare because the risks of being hit are so high. Soldiers used in “meat wave” assaults report staggering casualties.

“In June 2025, our team assessed that Russia was losing roughly 8,400–10,500 personnel per month as killed in action,” said Frontelligence Insight.