The UK Ministry of Defence’s Defence Intelligence update of 3 May 2025 paints a stark picture of Russia’s manpower losses in its war against Ukraine. London assesses that since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, Russia has likely incurred approximately 950,000 casualties, combining both killed and wounded. Strikingly, around 160,000 of those losses occurred in just the first four months of 2025—putting this year on track to become the deadliest of the conflict if current trends persist. Daily attrition remains severe: Ukrainian General Staff figures cited in the update indicate that April 2025 averaged just over 1,200 Russian casualties per day—roughly 36,000 for the month—down slightly from March’s average of about 1,300 per day. While these rates are below the late-2024 peaks that neared 1,600 daily, British analysts stress they still sit at the upper end for the entire war. Crucially, this human toll has not translated into meaningful battlefield gains in 2025: despite continued assaults across multiple axes, Russia has failed to convert high casualty rates into significant advances. The update thus underscores a grim calculus: Moscow is sustaining extraordinary personnel losses for marginal returns, and the year-on-year trend points toward rising aggregate casualties. Multiple Ukrainian and international outlets echoed the UK assessment on the same day, reinforcing the topline judgments about total losses to date, the sharp pace of casualties in early 2025, and the ongoing disconnect between Russia’s expenditure of troops and its limited territorial results. Together, these data points suggest that unless Russia changes either its operational approach or its political objectives, the remainder of 2025 is likely to impose even higher costs without decisive breakthroughs.