The future of the Ukraine-Russia conflict hangs in the balance under President Donald Trump, with a Republican Congress eager to tone down military aid, and Trump suggesting the U.S. should receive compensation for supporting Kyiv.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he can bring the near-three-year conflict to an end, this week announcing he had a "lengthy and highly productive" phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he would meet with the Russian leader face-to-face in Saudi Arabia at a future date.
As he attempts to negotiate a peace deal, Trump suggested to reporters that Russia had lost 1.5 million troops, a figure unsupported by available analysis.
The Claim
At a press conference in the White House, on February 11, 2025, when Trump spoke about the release of U.S. teacher Marc Fogel who was held for three years in Russia on a drug-smuggling conviction, he said: "We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually. I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed.
"They've lost millions of people. They've lost, in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time."
The Facts
This is not the first time Trump has made unsupported claims about loss of life in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. In August 2024, he told TV presenter Dr. Phil that "you'd have a million people living right now" if the invasion had not happened, which Newsweek's Fact Check team debunked.
Newsweek has contacted a White House media representative via email for comment. When asked about the source of the figure, a Pentagon spokesperson referred Newsweek to the White House "for anything related to the President's statements."
If, as the context of Trump's comments suggests, he is talking about Russian troop losses, his claim is not based on any available, credible evidence.
For the benefit of the doubt, and as it wasn't explicit, Newsweek has treated the term "lost" to mean losses from those killed or injured. Trump said last month that 1.7 million soldiers across both sides had been killed, as reported by Politico, for which there is no evidence. Even though he went on to say that he was "interested primarily from the standpoint of death," Newsweek assessed the total of wounded and killed.
A November 2024 report by the French Institute of International Relations referenced British military intelligence that said that as of May 2024, Russia's killed and wounded was up to 500,000. Using data from other conflicts to estimate the amount of Russian irreversible losses (those killed, wounded who died in hospital, or otherwise immobilized), the report suggested total irreversible Russian casualties in Ukraine by mid-summer 2024 had reached around 460,000.
In December 2024, the U.K. Minister for the Armed Forces, Luke Pollard MP, told the U.K. Parliament's House of Commons: "Our assessments further indicate there have been over 750,000 Russian casualties since the beginning of the full-scale invasion with the grim milestone of one million Russians dead and wounded likely to be reached within approximately six months."
Global security experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in a report published this week that, as of early January 2025, it estimated a minimum of 172,000 Russian troops had been killed, with 611,000 wounded, of whom 376,000 were severely wounded. Recruitment since the start of the war had generated approximately 976,000 personnel, it said, adding that up to an accumulated 235,000 Russian wounded were "recoverable."
Recent estimates published by Ukraine's military say that as of February 10, 2025, Russian casualties had reached 850,490. While larger, its total isn't far from independent experts and government reports, with recent Ukrainian analyses echoing experts outside Kyiv. For example, the IISS's estimate of 783,000 from early January 2025 was, by its own words, a "minimum" approximate and, as noted by defense-industry specialist magazine Defense Express, was roughly in line with the Ukrainian military estimate published in late December 2024 of 789,550.
Joris Van Bladel, a senior research fellow at international relations think tank the Egmont Institute in Brussels, told Newsweek that Trump's estimate had "no basis in reality."
"The most reliable sources, BBC Russian Service and Mediazona, have recently verified 90,000 confirmed Russian fatalities. They estimate the actual number of Russian KIA (Killed in Action) to be between 138,500 and 200,000," Bladel said.
"As a rule of thumb in military contexts, this number is typically multiplied by three to estimate the number of WIA (Wounded in Action). This means we are looking at roughly 415,500 to 600,000 wounded.
"In other words, total Russian losses (KIA + WIA) are at most between 550,000 and 800,000 as of late January 2025.
"Given the current slowdown of the Russian offensive, an updated rough estimate would place the total Russian losses between 600,000 and 850,000. This is still far below 1 million, let alone 1.5 million."
Simply put, there is no evidence that Russian losses, even by combining totals of killed and wounded, are close to 1.5 million.
After Trump introduced his claim about Russian soldiers, he then also referred to Ukrainian troops, repeating the 1.5 million figure.
"I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those soldiers and they're not American soldiers, they're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, but you're probably talking about a million and a half I think," he added.
"I think we got to bring that one to an end."
While he referred to Russian troops in the first instance, which still appeared to be the context of what he said as he mentioned Ukrainian soldiers, Newsweek has also assessed Ukrainian personnel losses to see if combined figures from both sides of the conflict came to 1.5 million.
Ukrainian Losses
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in December 2024 that 43,000 of its soldiers had been killed, and a further 370,000 wounded.
Other sources claim more losses. In November 2024, The Economist, summarizing estimates from intelligence agencies, defense officials, researchers, and open-source intelligence, suggested at least 60,000 to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died, with "perhaps a further 400,000 too injured to fight on."
One U.S. official who spoke to The New York Times in August 2023 said 70,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and a further 100,000 to 120,000 wounded. There have been fewer estimates of Ukrainian losses from Western officials.
In December 2024, Russian state media reported a briefing by the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov who said the Ukrainian army had lost, as reported by TASS, "close to one million soldiers killed and wounded." The reporting of this figure was not supported with evidence.
If Trump were referring to a combination of Russian and Ukrainian government estimates, the total would sit around 1.6 million to 1.8 million, depending on how close to one million Gerasimov's estimate was. However, Gerasimov's claim is not in line with credible analysis, which indicates that Russian casualties vastly outstrip Ukraine's.
On December 12, 2024, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said there had been "over one million casualties since February 2022", counting both Russians and Ukrainians.
Using the largest of the credible estimates would mean that even if Trump had referred to Ukrainian and Russian combined losses, including both those killed or wounded, the number still wouldn't reach 1.5 million.
Civilian Casualties
Outside the battlefield, the number of civilian deaths is weighted heavily toward Ukraine. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in an update for January 2025, that there had been 41,783 Ukrainian civilian casualties since February 24, 2022, with 12,605 civilians killed and 29,178 wounded. It said the actual extent of civilian casualties is likely to be "considerably higher" as it has not been possible to verify a large number of reports and access areas where civilian harm had been reported.
There have been fewer reliable reports about the Russian civilian death toll. Russian news outlet 7x7, which the Russian government classified as "foreign agents" in 2023, said 394 Russian civilians had been killed as of August 2023.
Russian officials in border regions reported hundreds of civilian casualties in 2024. While Russian civilians have died during the conflict, other authorities have not independently verified the figures. Both Kyiv and Moscow have denied targeting civilians.
In any case, Trump seemed to refer only to military casualties, not civilian losses.
The Ruling
False.
There are no estimates that 1.5 million Russian soldiers have been killed and wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine. Recent analyses suggest manpower losses of around 780,000 as of early January 2025. Ukrainian government estimates from February 2025 claim 850,000 Russian troop losses. While the Ukrainian government is thought to have overcounted Russian losses and undercounted its own, some of its recent assessments have been similar to those by government and expert analyses outside of Kyiv.
An independent analyst told Newsweek that Trump's estimate of Russian losses had "no basis in reality."
Trump would still be short if he referred to casualties from both sides of the conflict, including those killed and wounded, as he later may have done. The largest of the available credible assessments still does not reach 1.5 million. Even taking the highest of these credible estimates for each side combined, the total would be 1.35 million.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
About the writer
Tom Norton is Newsweek's Fact Check reporter, based in London. His focus is reporting on misinformation and misleading information in ... Read more