Russia Retreat From Kupiansk Reveals Accelerating Casualty Crisis

Even the Kremlin's small infiltration units are finding it hard to survive in Ukraine this year. 

As the first four months of the year have ended, Russia is facing a 'casualty crisis.' The number of dead and wounded are accelerating due primarily to ever more effective Ukrainian drones and their operators. But Russian losses are growing due to another, unexpected bureaucratic factor: more Russian families are demanding that their missing loved ones in Ukraine be declared dead - and Russian courts are complying. The families want both the finality of their situation officially decreed, in part so they can collect the death benefits owed them. These results are public and thus difficult to conceal or alter. JL

Mick Ryan reports in Futura Doctrina:

That Russian forces are no longer in Kupiansk, after struggling for months to support a small infiltration speaks to the logistical fragility of Russia’s operations when supply lines are contested. Ukraine is stepping up its ‘middle strike’ operations and the Russians are finding it difficult to convert infiltrations into sustainable gains. Ukraine's gains of the last two months reverse a long-term Russian trend. Monthly figures reveal a crisis of accelerating Russian casualties. The scale is being recorded in Russia’s legal and administrative systems in ways difficult to conceal. The 352,000 figure is broken down into 261,000 ‘regular’ fatalities and 90,000 ‘late’ fatalities whose deaths were declared by court order as missing and confirmed, or deaths registered with a delay over 180 days because bodies were not recovered, or not identified. This became visible in Probate Registry and Russian court records from mid-2024 on, when a mass campaign of court applications seeking to have soldiers declared missing or dead began to gather pace.

The frontline this week was one of sustained Russian pressure with no major advances or breakthroughs. Ukraine’s General Staff reported 245 combat engagements in a single 24-hour period on 8 May (during Russia’s ceasefire), with Russian forces using 8,189 kamikaze drones and conducting 1,936 artillery barrages. The previous day had seen 208 combat engagements, 9,113 drones, and 292 guided aerial bombs dropped.

The Kupiansk axis has seen an interesting development. The ISW has assessed that Russian forces likely no longer maintain positions in Kupiansk itself, after struggling for months to support a small and isolated group of servicemembers that infiltrated into the city. This speaks to the logistical fragility of Russia’s extended offensive operations when supply lines are contested. With Ukraine stepping up its ‘middle strike’ operations against Russian logistics across the front line (what we would previously understand as battlefield interdiction), this may be an increasing trend in the following months. See more on this below.

Meanwhile, the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area, where Russian forces first infiltrated into the outskirts of Kostyantynivka in late October 2025, has seen no meaningful Russian progress, suggesting Russian forces are finding it increasingly difficult to convert local infiltrations into sustainable territorial gains.

Source: Russia Matters

For the second month in a row, it appears that Russia lost ground in its overall ground campaign in Ukraine. As the latest update from Russia Matters shows, Russia lost 46 square miles of territory in April. While small in the overall picture, this reinforces Ukrainian gains of the previous month. More importantly, it reverses a long-term Russian trend of month-on-month gains in territory illegally seized in Ukraine.

Since October 2023, Russia has gained ground every successive month – until now. Is this the start of a new trend in the war, or a temporary aberration similar to Russian losses of territory in September and October 2023? The next few months will tell.

At the same time, Russia is suffering major losses in killed and wounded. That is the subject of the next section of my update.

Russia’s Growing Casualty Crisis. The release of a new estimate by Mediazona and Meduza on 9 May provides the most rigorous independent accounting yet of Russian deaths in this war. Published on Russia’s Victory Day, the estimate places the total number of Russian citizens killed in Ukraine at 352,000 from the start of the full-scale invasion to the end of 2025. The methodology is explained in the article, which you can read here.

The 352,000 figure is broken down into two categories. 261,000 are what Mediazona terms ‘regular’ fatalities, calculated using the same method as previous estimates. The remaining 90,000 are ‘late’ fatalities: servicemembers whose deaths were declared by court order, registered as missing and subsequently confirmed dead, or whose deaths were officially registered with a delay of at least 180 days, because bodies were not recovered, not identified, or not delivered. This group became visible in both the Probate Registry and Russian court records only from mid-2024 onwards, when a mass campaign of court applications seeking to have servicemembers declared missing or dead began to gather pace.

The Mediazona number exists within a broader range of estimates from governments and think tanks. The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in January 2026 that Russia had suffered at least 325,000 deaths between February 2022 and December 2025, with total casualties of 1.2 million. Then-British spy chief Richard Moore placed KIAs at approximately 240,000 by September 2025. Former CIA director William Burns estimated 1.1 million total casualties in a January 2026 interview. The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service and Bloomberg-cited Western officials both estimated around 1 million to 1.2 million combined killed and wounded by early 2026. Mediazona’s 352,000 dead is consistent with and sits at the upper end of these assessments.

The monthly breakdown from Ukrainian military statistics reveals an acceleration in casualties. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence recorded 35,351 Russian casualties in March 2026 and 35,203 in April 2026. President Zelenskyy confirmed on 5 May that Russia had lost more than 35,000 killed and seriously wounded in April 2026, with each confirmed casualty individually verified. In March, he reported that Russia had lost nearly 100,000 soldiers in the preceding three months, and that 90 percent of Russian front-line casualties were being attributed to Ukrainian drones. For context, December 2024 had set the single-month record at 48,670 casualties, part of a 2024 total of 430,790, equivalent to nearly 36 motorised rifle divisions.

The full picture, combining the Mediazona estimate with the monthly Ukrainian figures, is one of Russian society sustaining losses at a pace and scale that no major power has sustained since the Second World War. Russia’s total estimated losses now represent close to one percent of the country’s entire population of 143.3 million.

Two important caveats apply. First, Ukraine’s casualty figures combine killed and wounded in a single count and cannot be independently verified; they should be read as an order-of-magnitude indicator rather than a precise tally. Second, Mediazona’s 90,000 ‘late’ fatalities are an estimate as of mid-2025; more recent ‘belated’ deaths are not yet visible in the data because of the 180-day registration delay. The actual figure for the end of 2025 and into 2026 may be higher.

The Mediazona estimate reveals that Russia’s casualty crisis is probably far larger than Moscow’s silence on the subject might suggest. The scale of loss is being recorded in the nation’s legal and administrative systems in ways that are proving difficult to conceal. Although, given these new revelations, I am sure Putin will try to now reduce access to even these sources.