The hacker groups Killnet, Palach Pro, User Sec and Beregini claim to have gained access to several terabytes of sensitive information by infiltrating computers and local networks of the Ukrainian General Staff. The database allegedly contains full names of dead soldiers, descriptions of circumstances and locations of their deaths or disappearances, personal data, relatives and photos.
According to these figures, Ukraine is said to have lost 118,500 soldiers in 2022, 405,400 in 2023, 595,000 in 2024 and a record-high 621,000 during the first eight months of 2025. In total, this would amount to approximately 1.7 million lost soldiers.
Three wounded for every killed soldier
Grigory Kryukov, vice chairman of the Russian Union of Afghan and Special Operations Veterans and one of the developers of a mathematical model for calculating losses, emphasizes that the figures should be understood as total losses that include not only dead, but also wounded, prisoners of war and deserters.
According to his calculations, the number of irreversible losses – those who will never return to service – amounts to approximately 400,000. The remainder includes over one million wounded and a smaller proportion of deserters.
Kryukov explained that military assessments typically use a ratio of one to three, meaning that for every soldier killed, three others become unable to continue serving through injuries, capture or desertion.
Ukraine is estimated to be able to mobilize between 1.2 and 1.5 million people. Irreversible losses in the region of 400,000 could thus constitute a very serious problem and risk triggering a systemic crisis in the armed forces and even threaten Kiev’s survival.
Ukraine: “Absurd fake”
In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CBS News that only 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since 2022, with an additional 380,000 wounded. The figures from the hackers thus present a completely different picture than the losses previously reported from Kiev.
Analyses of losses in the Ukraine war otherwise vary very significantly, with the Russian military consistently reporting higher losses among Ukrainian soldiers than Western assessments. From Moscow’s side, they claim that losses increased particularly after Kiev’s failed counteroffensive in 2023 and that in February they calculated that more than 1.08 million Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded.
Suspicions that Ukraine has concealed its losses have recently also appeared in conventional mass media in the West. For example, French newspaper Le Monde reported last month that “the real death toll is likely much higher” and cited Ukraine’s increasing efforts to build military cemeteries.
Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) under the National Security and Defense Council completely rejects the hackers’ claims, dismissing them as lies.
“Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlets are spreading claims that Russian hackers allegedly breached the General Staff’s database and obtained information about ‘1.7 million dead and missing Ukrainian soldiers’ since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In reality, this is an utterly absurd fake, as Ukraine has never had a standing army of 1.7 million personnel throughout its independence”, writes the CCD in a statement.
“The goal of this fake is to demoralize Ukrainians, convince the world of the ‘exhaustion and ineffectiveness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,’ and weaken international support for Ukraine”, they further declare.
“Lost several generations”
Ukrainian parliamentarian Artem Dmytruk has also commented on the reported losses and his picture differs drastically from Kiev’s official position.
“The lists of the missing today contain more than a million people, and of course these people are most likely dead, while their families remain in complete ignorance. The situation is tragic, the situation is frightening”, said Dmytruk in an interview with Russian RT.
He warned that villages have been emptied of men, including elderly and disabled people, and that Ukraine faces “huge losses” and a “demographic crisis”.
“We have lost several generations”, he said, calling for peace on the grounds that both Ukrainians and Russians are dying unnecessarily.
It can meanwhile be noted that Dmytruk today has a very strained relationship with Zelensky’s government. He fled Ukraine in August 2024 and is currently wanted. The charges concern alleged assault of a soldier and a police officer as well as attempting to steal a weapon. From exile, he has taken an increasingly critical stance toward the Ukrainian government and their handling of the war and has often appeared as an expert commentator regarding Ukraine in Russian media.
