17OCT

Russia loses men 17 times Ukraine's rate

2 min read

17:43UTC

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

Bulgarian government

Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Rumen Radev, said the sinking of HS Dignity "benefits the Russian Federation" while saying Bulgaria lacked solid evidence to accuse anyone, and Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov asked NATO for air defence on 16 October. The request comes from a government that stopped state military aid to Ukraine in June.

Radoslaw Sikorski

Poland's foreign minister challenged Elon Musk on X after SpaceX capped Ukraine's Starshield terminals on 14 October. Poland pays about $50m a year for Ukraine's Starlink subscriptions, so Warsaw speaks as the paying customer as well as the ally.

Andy Burnham

Burnham fast-tracked £10m of a £45m air-defence missile delivery when Zelenskyy visited London on 14 October, and his ministers are lobbying allies to ban maritime services for Russian liquefied natural gas. The measure targets insurers and shipowners, many of them in London, rather than the gas itself.

Ministry of External Affairs (India)

India's foreign ministry said after the 16 September House vote that New Delhi would take all necessary measures to protect its trade.

European Council

EU leaders on 15-16 October rejected a US idea to hand Washington the roughly €200bn of frozen Russian assets held in Europe, and Kaja Kallas said the decision belongs to Europeans. The same summit put off a decision on financing Ukraine, saying leaders "will revert to the issue in a timely manner".

Donald Trump

Trump signed the 16 October order that sets the Graham Act's duties and waives them under section 115(a), with a certification sent to Congress. He says the United States has not stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, and on 11 October he said both sides had agreed to halt attacks on energy infrastructure.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.