Toll of Russia-Ukraine War Will Have Long-Lasting Impacts

Putting a figure on the precise number of dead and wounded in Russia's 2.5-year war on Ukraine is no easy task, but the Wall Street Journal believes it has now hit the 1 million mark. It arrived there using a "confidential" Ukrainian estimate from earlier in 2024 that noted 80,000 dead troops and 400,000 wounded; for Russian figures, it relied on Western intelligence estimates that put those numbers at up to 200,000 and 400,000, respectively. The Journal calls it "a staggering toll that two countries struggling with shrinking prewar populations will pay far into the future."

The Journal notes those declining populations were a major driver for Vladimir Putin from the start: The Russian president has long said that combating Russia's receding numbers is a priority, and one of his intentions in invading Ukraine was to absorb that population into his own. His 2014 annexation of Crimea added an estimated 2.4 million people to Russia's population. But in addition to Russia's heavy troop losses, it has also lost 600,000 largely young people who have exited Russia since the war's start; at least 10 times that many Ukrainians have left Ukraine over the same period.

The Journal notes Volodymyr Zelensky's own population concerns have impacted how the country's military mobilization has taken shape. The Ukrainian president "refuses to mobilize the key cohort of men aged between 18 and 25—typically the bulk of any fighting force— ... because most of these people haven't had children yet," former officials tell the Journal. Losing that group en masse could cause serious damage to the country's future population. As such, the estimated average age of a Ukrainian fighter right now is 43.