- Up to 350,000 soldiers have been killed during Russia's war against Ukraine.
- Russia has advanced into eastern Ukraine by less than 500 feet per day.
- Donald Trump has threatened Vladimir Putin with "severe consequences" if no deal is reached.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to make peace in Ukraine ahead of Friday’s meeting between the two in Alaska.
The summit — Trump and Putin’s first meeting since 2018 — is intended to be the first of two, with the second involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump told reporters.
Trump’s effort to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine comes more than three years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its western neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.
Since troops first crossed the border, Russia’s advance has ground to a grisly halt, with both countries entrenched along Ukraine’s eastern region as the war of attrition has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced.
How many have died in Ukraine?
Between 200,000 and 250,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine since the conflict began, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which based its recent analysis on U.S. and British estimates.
In an indication of Russia’s willingness to accept enormous losses, the country has experienced more than 950,000 military casualties — meaning death or serious injury — from February 2022 to May 2025, the report found.
Most estimates place Ukraine’s casualties much lower, at around 60,000-100,000 soldier fatalities for a total of roughly 400,000 troops removed from combat because of death or injury.
Despite abandoning his initial aim of taking over the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Putin has succeeded in slowly pushing back Ukrainian troops in the east and southeast of the country with Russia’s far larger fighting force.
The Russian military is nearly three times the size of Ukraine’s, with roughly 400,000 Russians facing around 250,000 Ukrainians along the front lines of battle, according to The New York Times.
As Russian troops have painstakingly crept deeper into Ukraine’s interior, the rate of casualties has actually increased every year since 2022, the Center for Strategic and International Studies report found.
These conscripts have largely come from Russia’s northern and eastern regions, as well as prisons — leaving the more politically influential population centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg free from some of the war’s impacts.
Ukraine has conducted limited attacks into Russian territory, resulting in at least 652 civilian deaths, according to Russian government agencies, which estimate that over 3,200 civilians have been wounded.
A constant onslaught of long-range missiles into urban areas has killed at least 13,580 civilians in Ukraine, with at least 34,115 documented civilian injuries, including 2,173 injured children, according to the United Nations.
How much territory in Ukraine has been taken?
But this level of casualties, totaling around 1.5 million people — the greatest losses in Europe since World War II — have translated into almost zero movement on the battlefield in recent months.
After Russia seized 46,000 square miles of Ukraine in the first five weeks of the war, Ukraine retook roughly 20,000 of those, and Russia has since struggled to make any territorial gains, currently occupying less than 28,000 square miles, or 12% of Ukraine, not including Crimea.
Since January 2024, Russia has won over less than 2,000 additional square miles of eastern Ukraine, advancing an average of less than 500 feet a day, amid extensive minefields, trench systems and anti-vehicle obstacles.
While the warfare has been slow and grueling, it has not stopped it from dramatically disrupting the economies and communities in Ukraine and Russia.
Around 9.4 million Ukrainians have been displaced since the start of the war, according to Harvard Kennedy School’s Russia Matters. This represents more than one-fifth of Ukraine’s pre-invasion population of 44 million.
Less than 4 million of these have been internally displaced within Ukraine, while nearly 6 million have become international refugees, with the vast majority resettling in other European countries.
Around 800,000 Russians have emigrated since the war began for political or economic reasons, according to Russia Matters. And over 110,000 were displaced when Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last year.
Between 2022 and 2024, the Russian economy remained relatively resilient despite international sanctions, experiencing 5.6% growth to GDP, while Ukraine has seen a 27% drop to GDP over the past three years.
How much aid has been given to Ukraine?
The U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than any other country, but 15 other countries have spent a higher percentage of their GDP to help Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
The roughly $175 billion appropriated by Congress to aid the Ukrainian government, military and humanitarian efforts has made Ukraine the top recipient of U.S. assistance, a Council on Foreign Relations report found.
More than $70 billion of that aid has been used by Ukraine to fund weapons purchases and military operations, nearly $54 billion has been used to prop up Ukraine’s budget and less than $4 billion has been for humanitarian support.
The 27-country bloc of the European Union has provided over $192 billion in support to Ukraine, with nearly $60 billion specifically for military assistance, according to the EU’s European Commission website.
Trump’s stance on supporting Ukraine’s defense against Russia has shifted over time. In early July, a Pentagon official halted military shipments to Ukraine, apparently without the knowledge of many Republican officials and allies, out of concern that U.S. munitions were running low.
A week later, the president announced that his administration would reverse the temporary pause in arms shipments to Ukraine by allowing NATO allies to purchase weapons from the U.S. and then deliver them to Ukraine.
After months of making generous gestures to Putin to achieve a ceasefire, Trump threatened his Russian counterpart on Wednesday with “severe consequences” if he refused to strike a peace agreement during their upcoming negotiations.