1OCT

Russia loses men 17 times Ukraine's rate

2 min read

19:22UTC

ISW assessed slowing Russian momentum as deputy commander Madyar Brovdi reported a 53-to-three daily loss exchange, Russia spending soldiers at 17 times Ukraine's rate for ground it cannot hold.

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ConflictAssessed

Key takeaway

Russia is losing soldiers 17 times faster than Ukraine for a front that will not move.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington think tank, assessed slowing Russian momentum across the front around 23 June, with neither side able to force a decisive breakthrough⁠¹. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi, deputy commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, reported a daily exchange of 53 Russian losses to three Ukrainian⁠², roughly 17 times Ukraine's rate, for ground Russia cannot keep.

An attacker can absorb a worse exchange than a defender for a time, but 17 to one is steep even against Russia's deep manpower pool, and it buys almost no territory. ISW assessed Russia net-losing 91 square miles to 9 June and recorded no advances on 7 June as Mediazona's verified death toll climbed. The pattern of a 94% collapse in the advance rate has held since late May.

This is the reading that explains the day's fabricated footage from Kostyantynivka. When an army is paying 53 lives a day to move a line that does not move, the incentive to manufacture the appearance of progress grows. The loss-exchange data and the AI flag-planting video are two faces of the same condition: a war of attrition Russia is losing on the maths while insisting, on camera, that it is winning.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed around 23 June that the front line in eastern Ukraine has barely moved and that neither Russia nor Ukraine has the ability to make a dramatic breakthrough. A Ukrainian drone commander, Robert Brovdi, reported that Russia loses about 53 soldiers per day in these operations for every three Ukrainian soldiers killed. That means Russia is paying a much higher price in lives for the same amount of ground. Because Russia cannot show real advances on the map, it has resorted to fabricating videos that make small infiltrations look like major captures, as happened at Kostyantynivka. ISW uses satellite imagery and geolocated social media evidence to assess actual front-line positions.

What could happen next?

Consequence
A near-static front with a sustained 53:3 Russian-to-Ukrainian daily loss ratio creates attrition pressure on Russian manpower that will require increased mobilisation to sustain at the current operational tempo.
Risk
If the information-operations gap between Russian-fabricated footage and battlefield reality widens further, Russian domestic cohesion for continued high-casualty operations may erode among milblogger audiences that provide key informal legitimisation for the war.

Source Landscape

This story draws on mixed-leaning sources from Ukraine

Ukraine

Consensus view: ISW's assessment that neither side holds the capacity for a decisive breakthrough is consistent with the attritional dynamic that has characterised the front since Kherson's liberation in November 2022.

A 53:3 daily loss ratio, if sustained, implies Russia is spending approximately 17 soldiers per day per kilometre held on the Donetsk contact line. At the Mediazona-confirmed rate of approximately 215 verified deaths per day, and assuming Mediazona captures 15-20% of true losses, Russia's actual daily death rate may be 1,000-1,400 soldiers per day across all axes.

Counter-view: Russian state media and some pro-Kremlin military bloggers contest the 53:3 figure, arguing that Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces command has a systematic interest in overstating the exchange rate to attract Western drone investment. The DeepState mapping service, which uses different geolocated evidence, has shown smaller Russian net losses in some periods than ISW, suggesting the two assessment methodologies produce materially different pictures of momentum.

Key tension: Whether a 53:3 exchange rate is a sustainable operational posture for Russia, or whether periodic tactical successes, including infiltration operations like Kostyantynivka, allow Moscow to maintain milblogger and domestic audience support without a strategic breakthrough.

Sources:Institute for the Study of War·Kyiv Independent

Mentions:Institute for the Study of War →Russia →Ukraine →Mediazona →Kremlin →Moscow →DeepState →Donetsk →Kherson →Washington →Brovdi →Unmanned Systems Forces →Kostiantynivka →

First Reported In

Update #21 · Ukraine's drones reach Russia's petrol pumps

Institute for the Study of War· 24 Jun 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

ISW: Russia lost ground; new axis opens

ISW's 9 June assessment of Russia net-losing 91 sq mi is the baseline against which the near-static 23 June front assessment is measured.

Occurred 9 Jun 2026

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This Event

Russia loses men 17 times Ukraine's rate

A loss exchange this lopsided is unsustainable even at Russian replacement rates, the attritional reality behind a front that no longer moves.

Led to

ISW finds no trace of Gerasimov's gains

The front has held at the same scale since June, when Russia was losing men at seventeen times Ukraine's daily rate for ground that barely shifted.

Occurred 18 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

Russia

Russia vetoed the same renewal on 17 September, arguing that Britain, France and Germany never validly triggered the snapback that reimposed the pre-2015 UN resolutions. No panel was ever seated under that mandate, so the UN list decays fastest for states that screen against it rather than against the American one.

China

China vetoed renewal of the UN sanctions monitoring mandate on 17 September, arguing that Resolution 2231 terminated on 18 October 2025 and that the Security Council should drop Iran's nuclear file altogether. On that reading there is nothing to monitor, so the sanctions survive and their enforcement does not.

Iraq

Baghdad saw the last American counter-Islamic State troops leave its territory on 30 September, completing a timetable it agreed with Washington in September 2024. Iraqi airspace deconfliction passes to Baghdad, which still has an open inquiry into the Maysan drone launches that has named nobody.

Pakistan

Treasury names Waseem Pasha Tajammal of Rawalpindi as the Cavalier group's chairman and places one of the designated incorporations in Islamabad. QatarEnergy separately told Pakistan that liquefied natural gas cargo cancellations would run through November, so Islamabad carries an enforcement question and a supply gap at once.

Turkey

Treasury named a Cavalier Dynamics company incorporated in Istanbul among the ten nodes it designated on 29 September, and Ankara has published no response. Turkey imported a record 120,000 barrels a day of Indian diesel in August, cutting Russia's share of its diesel imports to 20 per cent.

India

Suraj Yadav, a wiper from Uttar Pradesh, was killed aboard the Cape Dao on 23 September, and 19 of the ship's 20 Indian crew were taken off alive. India's September imports ran at 575,000 barrels a day from Iraq and 566,000 from Saudi Arabia, back to pre-conflict rates.