In late February 2022, Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, starting a war that, three years later, has become one of deadliest and most destructive in the 21st century.
Ukrainians and neighboring states and allies have watched in horror as the war unfolded. But there are surprisingly few universally agreed upon figures for the full extent of destruction. The number of civilians killed has most likely been underreported in the broad range of death toll estimates, and what official information the governments of Ukraine and Russia have released has been difficult to independently verify in the chaotic conditions of the war.
DW has surveyed data sources that systematically document the developments through transparent methodology.
Though battlefield may appear frozen, fighting remains fierce
After a fast offensive in early 2022, Russian troops were beaten back to southeastern Ukraine, where the war’s most intense combat continues. With a “dire shortage of infantry troops” leaving Ukraine struggling to hold on to the territory it has taken back, Russia has recently begun to advance again, according to The Associated Press.
Tracking the incremental changes on the battlefield over the past three years requires combining multiple methods. The Institute for the Study of War, for example, uses satellite observations, combat footage, official military reports and mobile device location data.
Including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were held by Kremlin-backed insurgents, Russia controlled an estimated 22% of Ukrainian territory in March 2022, after seizing about 90,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) in the early days of its invasion.
By November 2022, Ukrainian troops had recovered about 25,000 square kilometers, or around 4% of the country’s total territory. However, following incremental gains in late 2024, Russia now controls approximately 18.5% of Ukrainian territory, or more than 111,000 square kilometers in total.
Less shelling, more drone strikes and gun battles
With the heaviest fighting now concentrated in the southeast, the dynamics of the war have also changed.
According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), an organization that monitors news coverage and military reports from Ukraine and Russia, in the early stages of the invasion most attacks were carried out by shelling — that is, with heavy weapons and artillery, such as tanks, missiles and mortars.
As military aid to Ukraine has decreased and the country’s anti-aerial capabilities correspondingly diminished, according to ACLED, Russia began to increasingly use airstrikes in January 2024. Drones have also been employed more frequently.
The news agency Reuters has reported that combat drones that can be built for as little as $500 (€480) can cause major damage to multimillion-dollar artillery units such as tanks. This development has led to the increasing withdrawal of heavy artillery units from the front lines.
ACLED also found that battles with close-range gunfire exchanges (“armed clashes”) have increased as Russian troops have slowly broken through Ukraine’s defenses and made incremental territorial gains in the southeast.
Number of people killed is enormous — and many victims are civilians
In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in nearly three years of fighting. Media organizations such as The Economist, the Russian service of the BBC and The Wall Street Journal have reported their own figures, all of which contradict each other to some extent.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), a research group based at Sweden’s Uppsala University, has tracked global civilian and combatant death tolls in conflicts since the 1980s by compiling and vetting reports from news organizations, NGOs and other research institutions. The UCDP estimates that 174,000 to 420,000 people have been killed during the three years of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
More details on how these figures are compiled can be found here.
Civilian deaths severely undercounted
There is also no agreed on total number of civilians killed in the war.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has verified about 12,500 civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the fighting. This number counts only deaths confirmed through limited field visits and interviews, or backed by reliable documentation such as forensic records or medical data.
Most of the victims were killed in early 2022, but the number started to increase sharply again in 2024. According to the OHCHR, almost all of the victims were killed by shelling, missiles, rockets, airstrikes and drone attacks in dense residential areas.
Officials have said an inability to work in Russia and a lack of access to publicly available information within the country have hindered the OHCHR’s ability to verify reports of civilian deaths there. Verification of reports in Russian-occupied territory within Ukraine has also been hindered.
Russia has targeted civilian structures
Civilian infrastructure has been destroyed across Ukraine. The investigative journalism organization Bellingcat has used online footage to map the destruction since the beginning of the war.
Through January 2025, Bellingcat independently verified and categorized more than 2,000 instances of damage to civilian structures, including to education and health care facilities — which should be protected under international humanitarian law.
As Bellingcat depends on existing footage and an extensive verification protocol, the number of structures it has confirmed and documented as destroyed likely does not approach the total.
War has created mass displacement
An estimated 10 million people have fled their homes and are now displaced within Ukraine or abroad.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) tracks the number of displaced people throughout the world using data provided by governments, regional UNHCR offices and NGOs.
According to the UNHCR’s 2024 figures, about 3.7 million people are internally displaced within Ukraine. Another 6 million are currently living as refugees abroad, most of them in European countries such as Poland and Germany.
Edited by: Gianna Grün, Irina Schöll, Milan Gagnon
Data and code behind this story can be found in this repository.
More data-driven stories can be found here.
