How many have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war

1. What “killed” can mean — deaths vs casualties vs verified counts

Reporting uses three overlapping concepts: verified deaths (names, documentary evidence), estimated deaths (modelled from partial data), and broader “casualties” (killed, wounded, missing); CSIS and similar studies often report both fatalities and larger casualty totals (killed, wounded, missing), while projects like UALosses tally named combat deaths and missing personnel, producing different numbers for the same period ^{[1] [4]}.

2. Independent tallies of combat deaths: named counts and their limits

Name‑based tallies compiled by independent trackers have documented tens of thousands of military deaths: the UALosses project had documented 86,142 Ukrainian fighters killed and 89,324 missing (total 175,466 dead or missing) as of 7 January 2026, and joint counts by BBC Russian and Mediazona recorded at least 152,142 verified Russian military deaths as of late 2025 — but those projects note that verification depends on public notices, which undercounts deaths that are not publicly disclosed ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Think‑tank estimates that widen the envelope significantly

CSIS’s modeling, which aggregates multiple data sources and projects unreported losses, estimates roughly 100,000–140,000 Ukrainian military fatalities and as many as 325,000 Russian military fatalities through December 2025, producing combined military dead in the low hundreds of thousands and combined casualties (killed, wounded, missing) approaching 1.8 million to 2 million by spring 2026 — these estimates reflect modeling assumptions and should be read as a range, not a single verified count ^{[1] [3] [6]}.

4. Civilian deaths: verified minimums and likely undercounts

UN human‑rights monitors have verified almost 15,000 civilian deaths in Ukraine since 2022 but explicitly caution that verification is incomplete and the true civilian death toll is likely “considerably higher,” because many areas are inaccessible and documentation is fragmentary ^{[2] [3]}. Other trackers and statistical services report lower verified civilian counts for earlier periods, underscoring that civilian fatality reporting lagged and remains partial ^[7].

5. Why the numbers diverge — secrecy, methodology, and information warfare

Divergence stems from several factors: Russian official silence and suppression of casualty reporting, reliance by independent tallies on public death notices and social media which undercount hidden losses, and modeling choices by think‑tanks that extrapolate from limited data and produce much larger estimates; outlets such as CSIS and major news organizations note both that Russia’s official figures are far lower and that independent counts are almost certainly underestimates for total deaths ^{[3] [5] [1]}.

6. Bottom line answer and what can be stated with confidence

What can be stated with confidence is that verified civilian deaths in Ukraine number in the tens of thousands (UN‑verified nearly 15,000), named independent tallies document well over 100,000 military deaths on each side when combined in some datasets, and model‑based estimates put total military fatalities in the low hundreds of thousands with combined military and non‑military casualties (killed, wounded, missing) potentially approaching 1.8–2 million — therefore a single precise death count does not exist in the public record, but credible estimates place total deaths (military and civilian) in the hundreds of thousands, with substantial uncertainty and upward risk due to unverified losses ^{[2] [4] [1] [3]}.