ANALYSIS: 40,000 Russian soldiers per month — arithmetic of an empire that bleeds but does not collapse

ANALYSIS: 40,000 Russian soldiers per month — arithmetic of an empire that bleeds but does not collapse

Introduction: Numbers that defy logic

A casualty rate without precedent in modern military history

Since November 2025, Russia has been losing 40,000 soldiers per month — killed, seriously wounded, captured, or missing — according to estimates from Western military officials reported by the Telegraph and corroborated by ISW assessments. This figure is no longer a rough estimate: it is a confirmed floor backed by multiple independent sources. To put it in perspective, 40,000 casualties per month is equivalent to the total American losses throughout the entire Vietnam War — compressed into six weeks.

More significant still: for the first time since the large-scale invasion of February 24, 2022, Russia is losing more soldiers than it can recruit. General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, confirmed in June 2026 that Ukrainian forces had killed 12,500 more Russian soldiers than Russia was able to recruit since the start of 2026. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, speaking in early June, cited 35,000 Russian casualties per month for the recent period, against 27,000 monthly recruits. Russia's cumulative total losses now exceed 1.3 million soldiers according to NATO estimates, including 500,000 killed.

An arithmetic that should be fatal — but is not yet

This arithmetic is theoretically merciless. In practice, Vladimir Putin has proved his capacity to absorb human losses at a level that democratic Western societies would consider politically intolerable. Russia has mobilized convicts, migrants from Central Asia, fighters recruited in remote regions with financial bonuses, and mercenaries from a reconstituted Wagner Group. It has systematically drawn on its reserves while maintaining an official narrative of inevitable victory.

For Western analysts, the fundamental mistake would be to believe that numbers alone should trigger a collapse. The USSR lost 27 million people during the Second World War without collapsing militarily. Putin's regime has internal coercive capacity, a nationalist narrative, and an economic structure that allows it to absorb military losses no democratic government could sustain. The question is therefore not "when does Russia collapse?" but "how fast is its offensive capacity declining?"

Putin's war of attrition model: resilient but fracturing

Territorial advance slowing to a halt

The territorial data of 2026 tell a different story from 2025. In 2025, Russian forces were advancing at an average rate of 13.2 square kilometers per day. In 2026, this rate fell to 2.9 square kilometers per day — a reduction of 78% — according to ISW assessments for the first four months of the year. In some areas, factoring in infiltrations, the advance rate climbs back to roughly 4.6 square kilometers per day — but still less than half the 2025 pace.

In May 2026, the most recent month with full available data, Russian forces gained only 40 square kilometers in total according to ISW, or just 14 square kilometers according to the DeepState group — Russia's worst result since October 2023. Ukraine's campaign of long- and medium-range strikes against Russian logistics, munitions depots, refineries, and transportation infrastructure largely explains this slowdown. During that same month of May, Ukraine recaptured more than 600 square kilometers since the start of 2026.

Ukraine's strike campaign changes the rules of the game

Ukraine launched in March 2026 a systematic campaign of medium-range strikes against Russian logistical infrastructure in occupied territory — and long-range strikes against refineries and military bases on Russian territory. The documented results: according to ISW, Ukrainian forces conducted at least 210 medium-range strikes in May 2026 and 145 in June, as well as 33 strikes against Russian oil infrastructure in May. Russian oil production declined for the sixth consecutive month in June 2026, reducing export revenues and therefore resources available to the war economy.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced in May 2026 that the objective of inflicting more Russian losses than Russia could recruit had been achieved in April 2026, and that the new objective was to reach 50,000 Russian casualties per month. According to him, Ukraine was on track to reach that figure in May. If these estimates are accurate, Russia's manpower deficit is worsening every month.

The Russian war economy: under pressure but not on its knees

Sanctions extended 12 months: increased pressure

On June 25, 2026, the Council of the European Union officially extended economic sanctions against Russia for 12 additional months — through July 31, 2027. This is the first time these sanctions have been extended for a period of 12 months rather than the previous 6. This extension, decided at the European Council of June 18–19, covers trade, finance, energy, and dual-use technologies. It includes an embargo on imports or maritime transport of Russian crude oil and certain petroleum products, as well as restrictions on Russian financial institutions and cryptocurrency service providers.

Simultaneously, the price cap on Russian oil at $44 per barrel is under discussion for revision — Urals crude is currently trading at around $58 per barrel, meaning Moscow is generating oil revenues above the intended cap. Whether the cap should be lowered or revised is at the heart of discussions on the 21st EU sanctions package, which Bulgaria — with its new government — is partially blocking for reasons related to its interests in Russian oil through Lukoil.

Russian economic resilience: an unpleasant reality

Russia has diversified its trading partners since 2022, notably toward China, India, Turkey, and the UAE. Its hydrocarbon exports have found new channels. Its economy recorded growth in 2023 and 2024, partly boosted by military spending. Inflation is high, interest rates are stratospheric, and the ruble is under pressure — but the Russian economy has not collapsed. Putin has successfully built a war economy that absorbs the shock of sanctions better than the optimistic analysts of 2022 predicted.

Significant signs of deep stress do exist, however. Fuel shortages in regions near the front, restrictions on petrol sales in regions like Belgorod and Kursk, declining oil production for the sixth consecutive month in June 2026 due to Ukrainian strikes on refineries, brain drain and demographic pressure created by mobilization: these are structural fractures accumulating. They are not yet triggering a collapse, but they are narrowing Moscow's economic room for maneuver over the long term.

Drones and the asymmetric revolution at the front

95% of Russian losses caused by drones

One of the most striking statistics of this conflict is this: according to estimates cited by Ukrainian analyst Denys Davydov and corroborated by Finnish President Stubb, roughly 95 to 96% of Russian first-line losses are now caused by unmanned systems — FPV drones, reconnaissance drones, drone-bombs. Ukraine has industrialized drone warfare at a speed that surpassed all forecasts. Minister Fedorov announced that Ukrainian drones had struck more than 800,000 verified Russian targets in 2026 as of June 22.

This asymmetric revolution fundamentally changes the military calculus. Ukraine compensates for its demographic and economic disadvantage against Russia with superiority in drone warfare. Its long-range strikes — which have already hit cities and infrastructure thousands of kilometers inside Russian territory, including Moscow — are creating a psychological and logistical pressure that Russian defenses struggle to fully contain. In March 2026, for the first time since the start of the war, Ukraine fired more missiles and drones toward Russia than Russian air defenses could intercept.

Russia's strategic dilemma in the Donbas

On the ground in the Donbas, the situation for Russia is increasingly difficult. The few cities Russian forces are still trying to take — Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, some localities around Pokrovsk — represent objectives that could take another 6 to 12 months of intensive effort according to analysts. Meanwhile, Ukrainian pressure on Russian supply lines in the south, strikes against bridges and rail corridors toward Crimea, and operations in the Kursk region inside Russia maintain multiple pressure on Russian military planners.

The real risk for Russia is not a spectacular rout — it is a gradual and irreversible degradation of its offensive capacity combined with internal mobilization that is exhausting the human resources of peripheral regions. Some analysts, including Granville cited by CNBC, estimate that within a 12-month horizon, Ukrainian pressure on Russian logistics and society could lead Moscow to accept an armistice along current front lines — without Russia having achieved its declared territorial objectives.

The limits of pressure: why Putin does not yield

The internal Russian political logic

Vladimir Putin cannot lose this war politically without losing power. That is the fundamental constraint explaining his persistence despite colossal human and economic losses. Within the narrative framework he has built for the Russian people, this war is an existential battle against an expansionist NATO and a decadent West. Admitting defeat or withdrawal would mean admitting the narrative was false. Putin's regime is built on that narrative. It cannot abandon it without destabilizing itself.

Internal Russian repression has intensified. Opponents, independent journalists, anti-war activists face escalating sentences. Civil society has been strangled by decades of authoritarian regression. The internal opposition is incapable of exerting sufficient pressure to change Putin's calculus. The idea that an internal Russian political collapse can be triggered from outside by sanctions or military defeats is a hope, not a solid analytical projection.

Chinese and North Korean support: key variables

Putin's ability to sustain his war economy depends in part on indirect support from China and direct military support from North Korea. China has maintained commercial exchanges with Russia, supplied dual-use components, and absorbed some of the Russian exports that Western markets now refuse. North Korea has supplied artillery munitions and soldiers who fought on the Kursk front. These supports are not sufficient to reverse the military trend — but they are prolonging Russia's ability to absorb its losses. Could the American-Iranian normalization agreement from Lucerne affect Pyongyang's availability to support Moscow? That is an open question whose answer could have consequences on the Russian military calculus.

The real limit to Putin's war of attrition model is not human losses — which he can absorb longer than predicted. It is the combination of progressive economic degradation, declining oil production, growing inability to reconstitute lost heavy equipment, and the erosion of offensive capacity that makes territorial gains increasingly costly for increasingly marginal results.

The war of numbers: Russian and Ukrainian losses in perspective

Counting the dead in a war of denial

Establishing the human toll of the war in Ukraine is an exercise in documented uncertainty. Both sides have strategic reasons to manipulate the figures. Russia systematically minimizes its losses to maintain domestic support and prevent the human reality of the war from contradicting the official narrative of a clean and controlled "special military operation." Ukraine, for its part, faces contradictory incentives: overstate Russian losses to demonstrate the effectiveness of its resistance and justify Western support, while minimizing its own losses to maintain morale.

The most rigorous estimates — from sources like the ISW, the RUSI, American and British military intelligence — converge on a bleak picture from both sides. Russia is estimated to have suffered between 450,000 and 600,000 casualties (killed and wounded) since the start of the 2022 invasion. Ukrainian losses, while smaller, are nonetheless considerable and are beginning to weigh on the military demography of a much smaller country. These figures must inform all honest analysis of the war's sustainability.

Russian mobilization: quantity over quality

Russia's mobilization model since 2022 rests on a quantitative attrition logic: sending waves of poorly trained soldiers — the "zeroes" of the 2022 partial mobilization, prisoners enlisted in Wagner ranks, contractors recruited with cash bonuses — to saturate Ukrainian defenses. This strategy produces slow territorial gains at the cost of considerable human losses, and it is premised on the assumption that Russia can sustain this loss rate longer than Ukraine.

The counter-hypothesis — that quality prevails over quantity — is the one the Ukrainian army defends. Better trained, better equipped, better motivated soldiers, using drones and precision targeting systems, can compensate for numerical imbalance. The effectiveness of Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian munitions depots and command centers illustrates this doctrine. But maintaining this quality in the face of human attrition is Ukraine's central challenge in 2026.

The Russian war economy: apparent resilience and real fragilities

The Russian growth miracle: explanations and limits

The Russian economy defied post-sanctions collapse predictions. In 2023 and 2024, Russian GDP grew — fueled by massive military spending that created artificial demand in industrial sectors. Arms factories are running at full capacity, wages rose in defense-related sectors, unemployment remains low. On the surface, the Russian economy does not look like one under severe sanctions.

But this apparent resilience carries a considerable structural cost. Inflation has soared — the Bank of Russia's policy rate reached 21% at end of 2024 in an attempt to control it. Ruble depreciation has reduced import purchasing power. Investment in civilian sectors stagnates as resources are absorbed by the war machine. And above all, the Russian economy now depends on oil and gas revenues to finance growing budget deficits — a dependence vulnerable to commodity price fluctuations.

Sanctions: effective over the long term, insufficient in the short term

The debate about the effectiveness of sanctions against Russia must be framed in the right time horizon. In the short term — over one or two years — sanctions have not stopped the war. Russia found circumvention routes, alternative suppliers, commercial partners unconcerned by restrictions. But over the long term — five to ten years — the effects are cumulative and destructive: deindustrialization of high-tech sectors cut off from Western components, brain drain and capital flight, aging oil infrastructure without Western investment.

The objective of sanctions is therefore not to collapse the Russian economy this year — it is to make sustaining the war progressively untenable and to deprive Russia of the technological resources needed to modernize its military. This strategy demands patience and consistency in applying sanction regimes — two virtues that democracies struggle to maintain against domestic economic and political pressures.

Western support for Ukraine: state of play and prospects

Military aid: the numbers that count

Western military support for Ukraine since 2022 represents an effort without precedent outside world wars. The United States has provided more than $75 billion in military aid. European countries collectively exceeded $40 billion. These transfers included air defense systems (PATRIOT, IRIS-T, Hawk), tanks (Leopard 2, Abrams, Challenger 2), artillery systems (HIMARS, Caesar, Panzerhaubitze 2000), cruise missiles, and millions of shells.

This effort has allowed Ukraine to hold — which was far from certain in March 2022. But it also exposed the limits of Western stockpiles. European arsenals, hollowed out by decades of peace dividends, are at historically low levels in several critical categories. The war in Ukraine thus served as a brutal revelation of European defense industrial deficiencies — and accelerated the rearmament programs we observe today.

The sustainability of support: political risks in democracies

The sustainability of Western support for Ukraine is the most uncertain and most critical variable for the conflict's outcome. In democracies, support for a foreign war that lasts, costs money, and has no visible end is structurally fragile. Public opinion fatigues. Political parties exploiting "Ukraine fatigue" — whether far right or far left — are gaining electoral traction.

Sustaining support therefore depends on the ability to communicate its strategic value to Western societies — not just its moral value. Putin is betting on Western exhaustion. Every month of war without a decisive Ukrainian victory feeds the arguments of advocates for a "compromise" at any price. That is why the communicational dimension of support for Ukraine is as important as the material dimension.

Conclusion: An equation without a quick solution

What 40,000 monthly casualties really mean

The 40,000 monthly Russian casualties are a military reality that makes Russian victory increasingly costly, without making it impossible in the short term. Russia is losing more than it recruits, but its mobilizable manpower stock remains substantial. Its economy suffers but has not collapsed. Its offensive capacity is declining but persists. The impact of this arithmetic will be decisive over a 12 to 24 month horizon, not in the coming weeks.

What can change the equation more quickly is Western military support for Ukraine — long-range missiles, air defense systems, artillery munitions — which amplifies the effect of Ukraine's drone campaign on Russian logistics. And it is the maintenance of economic sanctions, which are progressively reducing Putin's fiscal room. Putin's war of attrition can be won — but not by a quick solution. By a persistence that Western democracies must maintain against their own internal political pressures.

What the West must understand

The West must resist two opposing temptations: euphoria at Russian casualty figures, which masks the real resilience of Putin's regime, and defeatism in the face of the conflict's persistence. The right analysis is one of sustained realism: support Ukraine as long as needed, maintain sanctions, strengthen common European defense, and accept that this war is measured in years, not months. Putin's war of attrition has real limits — but revealing them will take time and political discipline that Western societies must find within themselves.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Sources and methodology

This analysis draws on public assessments from ISW, statements by the Ukrainian command, reports from Reuters, CNBC, Euromaidan Press, Wikipedia (for consolidated casualty data), and NATO reports. Russian casualty figures are estimates — Russia does not publish official data. I used figures most consistently cited by multiple independent sources.

What I do not know

I cannot predict the evolution of the military situation in the Donbas, nor independently assess the internal resistance of Putin's regime. My analysis of Russian economic resilience is based on publicly available data from June 2026.

Sources

Primary sources

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 11, 2026 — June 11, 2026

ISW — Ukraine's Intermediate-Range Strike Campaign — May 2026

Ukrainska Pravda — EU extends economic sanctions against Russia for another year — June 26, 2026

Secondary sources

Shatterbelt — Russia's Losses Just Exceeded Recruitment for the First Time — March 29, 2026

RBC-Ukraine — Ukraine's long-range strikes against Russia are growing in scale — June 23, 2026

CNBC — Ukraine drone strikes test Putin's resolve — June 24, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Russo-Ukrainian war, day 1563 — June 6, 2026

The Moscow Times — Inside the Ukrainian Deep-Strike Campaign — June 22, 2026