Russia suffers record 54,400 casualties in October, Ukraine says and 2.1M since war began

Russia suffered more than 54,000 casualties in October, the highest of any month since the war began, according to Ukraine — with Moscow losing even more ground under Kyiv’s counterattacks.October saw 54,400 Kremlin troops killed, wounded or gone missing in action, about 8,170 more than the prior month, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.“This is a record for any month of the full-scale war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky touted on Telegram.“There is also a record for daily losses: the Russian army lost 2,250 people on October 21.” In all, Moscow is estimated to have suffered between 1.4 million to 2.1 million casualties since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, The Economist reported.

The outlet’s estimates show that between 374,000 and 770,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in action so far, a steep increase from May, when it estimated that at most 518,000 troops were dead.The estimates fall in line with the projections released earlier this year by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank and the UK military.The death count is more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II, according to the CSIS.Russia’s “meat grinder” tactic of sending wave after wave of soldiers to try and overwhelm Ukraine’s defenses has been blamed for the high casualty count, which has only gotten worse in 2026 as Kyiv pushes along the front lines and makes effective use of cheap hunter-killer drones.Unmanned Systems Forces commander Robert Brovdi estimated that his pilots hit a Russian soldier once every 2 and a half minutes in October, or about 542 troops a day.Through the counterattacks, Ukraine has taken back another 37 square miles in October, more than the 33 square miles Russia reportedly took in the same month, according to Zelensky.

The gains come amid Kyiv’s Operation Vivaldi, a phased counter-assault aimed at liberating ...