How bloody is the war in Ukraine?

Recent history since the end of the Cold War has been full of wars of various kinds, inflicting terrible human suffering against both civilians and military personnel alike. Here we seek to make a comparison between the war in Ukraine and other wars since 1990, to assess in relative terms just how bloody the conflict in Ukraine has been and continues to be.

Ukraine, 2014–present

Counting in Ukraine rests on two very different statistical traditions. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission verifies individual civilian deaths on a case-by-case basis; its latest cumulative update (to 31 July 2025) records 13,883 civilians killed and 35,548 injured since 24 February 2022—explicitly a minimum because access to occupied areas is limited. For the pre-2022 phase in Donbas (2014–2021), the UN put total deaths at roughly 14,200–14,400, including about 3,400 civilians. These UN counts are conservative by design. 

Military deaths are harder. On the Russian side, BBC News Russian and Mediazona have confirmed by name well over 100,000 dead (108,608 as of mid-May 2025), and—triangulating probate records—estimate Russia’s total military dead at roughly 160,000–165,000 by the end of 2024. Ukraine keeps her own fatality data close; a mid-2025 analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) judged Ukrainian military dead at approximately 60,000–100,000, with total Ukrainian military casualties (killed and wounded) around 400,000. These ranges are wide but come from the few methodologically explicit sources available. 

How this compares to other post-1990 wars

Comparability hinges on definitions. “Battle-related deaths” (Uppsala Conflict Data Program) count direct violence; some headline figures also include “indirect” deaths from hunger, disease, or collapsed services. Where possible we indicate which a source is using. 

• Syria (2011–): The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts total deaths at about 656,000 by March 2025 (combatants and civilians, largely direct violence). This is markedly higher than Ukraine’s civilian plus military totals to date. 

• Yemen (2014–): A UNDP modelling study estimated 377,000 total deaths by end-2021, ~60% indirect (hunger, disease) rather than battlefield—illustrating how inclusion of indirect mortality changes rankings. Direct civilian violent deaths are a fraction of that total. 

• Rwanda (1994): United Nations material remains that at least 800,000 people were slaughtered in roughly 100 days, overwhelmingly civilians, a catastrophic outlier in lethality and speed. 

• Democratic Republic of the Congo (1998–2003 and aftermath): The International Rescue Committee’s series of mortality surveys estimated 5.4 million “excess deaths”, mostly indirect. The magnitude is contested in the demographic literature, but even lower alternative estimates still imply a toll well above most conflicts since 1990 once indirect effects are counted. 

• Bosnia (1992–95): The Research and Documentation Centre’s “Bosnian Book of the Dead” documents roughly 97,000–101,000 people killed (civilians and combatants combined), making Bosnia less deadly overall than Syria and Yemen but, like Ukraine, exceptionally lethal for Europe.

• Iraq (2003–11, then 2013–17 against ISIL): Iraq Body Count’s continuously updated ledger records approximately 187,000–211,000 documented civilian violent deaths since 2003; totals including combatants and indirect deaths are higher in academic syntheses (e.g. Brown University’s Costs of War). 

• Gaza/Israel (2023–): UN OCHA collates casualty reporting from health authorities and humanitarian partners; the running totals for Palestinian deaths in Gaza are in the tens of thousands and still rising—again underscoring how quickly modern urban wars generate large civilian tolls. 

• Tigray/Ethiopia (2020–22): Independent scholars and humanitarian officials have cited death-toll estimates on the order of hundreds of thousands; Reuters reported a frequently cited figure of ~600,000. Even with uncertainty, the scale puts Tigray amongst the deadliest recent wars. 

What this says about Ukraine’s relative “bloodiness”

First, on verified civilian deaths, the UN’s carefully documented Ukrainian count (~13,900 since 2022) is lower than the best-known figures for Syria and Yemen. But this is not an apples-to-apples comparison: OHCHR stresses its number is a floor, and Ukraine’s most devastated areas under Russian occupation are the hardest to audit. When analysts attempt broader tallies (as in Syria) or model indirect deaths (as in Yemen, Congo), the totals rise sharply. 

Second, on military deaths, Russia’s losses in Ukraine—six-figure and still climbing—are amongst the largest sustained battlefield fatality counts recorded for any single belligerent since 1990. Ukraine’s own military deaths are also very substantial, plausibly in the mid-five-figure to low-six-figure range, though the band of uncertainty is wide. In Europe, no interstate war since 1945 has produced comparable soldier losses, which places the Russo-Ukrainian war near the top of the post-Cold-War distribution for direct combat lethality—even if it remains well below the most catastrophic global cases once indirect deaths are included. 

Third, it is important to observe regional comparisons: measured by total deaths (direct + indirect), the Congo wars, Rwanda’s genocide, Yemen and Syria exceed Ukraine so far. Measured by sustained tempo of large-scale conventional combat between state militaries, Ukraine is an extreme case—arguably the most intense interstate war since the Iran-Iraq conflict—reflected in the scale of artillery duels, trench warfare, and drone-enabled attrition across a 1,000-km front. (That intensity shows up in the disproportionate share of military—rather than civilian—fatalities compared with many civil wars.)

How to read the numbers

• Mind the definition: verified civilian deaths, battle-related deaths, military "losses" (which may include the wounded as well as those dead, usually a far higher figure) and excess/indirect deaths answer different questions.

  
  

• Mind the uncertainty: for active wars, where too little is known to use accurate modelling, best practice is to present ranges and identify minimums rather than offer estimates.

• Mind the denominator: “bloodiness” can be expressed as absolute deaths, deaths per month, or deaths per 100,000 population; each frames the war differently.

Provisional bottom line

On today’s public statistics, the full-scale war in Ukraine is one of the deadliest armed conflicts of the post-1990 era in terms of direct battlefield deaths—especially for a European interstate war. However the war's verified civilian death toll sits below the headline totals for Syria and Yemen (and vastly below the genocide in Rwanda and the Congo wars), largely because Ukraine’s civilian figures are conservative minimums and exclude most indirect mortality.

The ranking could shift as access to occupied territories improves, bodies are identified, and researchers later model the war’s indirect effects. For now, “very bloody by modern standards, although not the deadliest overall since 1990”, is a fair characterisation.