Military equipment and personnel losses
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces released a video on October 28 that details the costs of Russia’s full-scale invasion over the last four and a half years. The cost of the war includes money, weapons, soldiers, and lost opportunities to invest in Russia’s future. Since February 24, 2022, the General Staff calculates that Russia has lost over 1,580,000 personnel, which means Russia loses nearly a thousand people every day and a soldier dies every 90 seconds. This figure includes both killed and injured soldiers. Moscow lost over $204 billion in military equipment, including 12,448 tanks, 51,674 artillery systems, and 25,609 armored combat vehicles. Ukraine also reports the destruction of 449 Russian aircraft, 356 helicopters, 35 vessels, two submarines, over 5,000 missiles, and 585,000 drones. Russia’s oil industry also took a severe hit from international sanctions and Ukrainian strikes against refineries and pipelines.
| Category | Reported Losses |
|---|---|
| Tanks | 12,448 |
| Artillery systems | 51,674 |
| Armored combat vehicles | 25,609 |
| Aircraft | 449 |
| Helicopters | 356 |
| Vessels | 35 |
| Submarines | 2 |
| Missiles | Over 5,000 |
| Drones | Over 585,000 |
Economic and industrial devastation
The war has drained the Russian economy through massive spending and industrial damage. The Russian government pays over $95 million per day in compensation for the dead and wounded. From August 2025 to August 2026, the Russian oil industry lost $13.5 billion because of international sanctions and Ukrainian strikes against refineries, pipelines, and shadow fleet tankers. In 2022, the war accounted for 4% of Russia’s GDP, but that figure rose to 7.5% in 2025. Russia spent $86 billion on the war in 2022, $190 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $186 billion in 2026. Total war spending exceeds $700 billion. Russia’s decision to wage this war is a catastrophic waste of national resources. This massive sum could have funded 10,000 kilometers of modern highways, 1,000 new schools, 200 large hospitals, or the complete construction of five modern cities of 8 to 10 million people. The money could also have provided a million rubles to every child born since the start of the invasion and paid double the pension to every pensioner for two years.
