Civilians in Ukraine and Russia are paying an ever-higher price in the war

The war unleashed on Europe’s eastern frontier after the large-scale Russian invasion more than four years ago is causing an increasing number of civilian deaths and injuries. The year 2025 was the deadliest for civilians since the first year of the conflict, when many civilians died in the opening months. In 2026, that trend has continued. Both sides deny that civilians are the target of their attacks, but casualty figures show that non-combatants are increasingly being ...

The war unleashed on Europe’s eastern frontier after the large-scale Russian invasion more than four years ago is causing an increasing number of civilian deaths and injuries. The year 2025 was the deadliest for civilians since the first year of the conflict, when many civilians died in the opening months. In 2026, that trend has continued. Both sides deny that civilians are the target of their attacks, but casualty figures show that non-combatants are increasingly being caught up in the violence.

“Unfortunately, we expect this year to be even deadlier than the last,” says an analyst from the independent Russian Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

The CIT recorded 2,650 civilian deaths in Ukraine in 2025 (297 in occupied areas and 2,353 in the rest of the territory). On the Russian side, the deaths amounted to 275. Those figures are based primarily on official records from regional governors, together with reporting from independent media. CIT classifies the data into three categories: Ukraine, occupied Ukraine, and Russia, while excluding attacks on military facilities.

In 2026, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) reported that the number of civilians killed (1,396) and injured (7,978) during the first six months of the year was already 37% higher than in the same period of 2025 and 114% higher than in 2024.

For its part, CIT has counted 2,183 civilian deaths across Ukrainian territory through July, a month that saw an exceptionally high number of fatalities. By comparison, 8,423 civilians were killed during the first year of the war, according to HRMMU data.

In Russia, where civilian casualties are not tracked by the U.N. mission, the death toll has reached 327 so far this year. As a result, the combined number of civilian deaths in the two countries during the first seven months of 2026 (2,510) is already approaching the total recorded for all of 2025 (2,925), according to the Russian research group. July was the deadliest month of the year, with 632 civilian deaths.

According to the HRMMU, the main driver of the rising civilian death toll in Ukraine is the use of long-range weapons, including powerful missiles with wide-area effects and drones, which are launched against urban areas. At the same time, near the front line, civilian deaths caused by short-range drones reached their highest level of the entire war in June.

Kyiv has also increased its offensive capability and has begun striking targets inside Russia at ever greater distances from the front, which has contributed to a rise in Russian civilian casualties as well.

For Ukraine, another key vulnerability is the shortage of interceptors for its air defense systems, which leaves the population exposed to Russian ballistic missile strikes, according to an analysis published on Substack by Phillips P. O’Brien, a warfare expert and professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews.

This trend is partly explained by the increase in long-range attacks using weapons such as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones, all of which are capable of striking urban areas far from the front lines. “The front is deadlocked, with battles that do not appear likely to succeed. That is why both sides are now devoting more effort to this kind of warfare: long-distance war. It’s said to be like a war of cities, like Iraq,” the CIT analyst explains.

Deliberately attacking the civilian population during an armed conflict constitutes a war crime and a violation of international humanitarian law (protections set out in the Geneva Conventions and their additional protocols), which require warring parties to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The war of drones and missiles

Between January and June this year, the number of civilians killed and injured by missiles and drones rose by 60% compared with the same period in 2025, according to the HRMMU. Yet the rationale behind this increasingly common strategy remains unclear.

“We don’t know what they’re hoping for, because, from a historical perspective, these airstrikes alone do not lead to victory,” says the CIT expert. “We see this in the war between Iran and the United States as well. But they hope that, for some reason, this will give them an advantage.”

Moscow has stepped up attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, and Ukraine has also carried out more strikes on Russian territory, especially in the past month, targeting facilities of the company Wildberries — known as the Russian Amazon — which has seen more than a dozen warehouses damaged.

While long-range weapons are increasingly used to strike urban areas far from the front, in localities close to the combat lines, Russian forces mainly rely on short-range drones, according to the HRMMU. “Despite on-board cameras allowing operators to view potential targets in real time, so-called first-person-view (FPV), these drones have become one of the leading causes of civilian casualties in Ukraine,” the mission notes on its website.

Across Ukrainian territory, the HRMMU has documented at least 237 attacks on cars and buses near the front line, forcing residents in those areas to drastically limit their movements.

The increase in Kyiv’s military capabilities has also allowed Ukraine to rethink its strategy in the conflict. “Until now, Ukraine had struck almost exclusively military targets, mainly because it did not have such a large number of weapons, so they were more precise in choosing targets. Now they have more options and can strike more targets,” the CIT analyst explains.

Far from the front

“Their [Kyiv’s] strategy, as we see it, is to maintain the stalemate on the front line, or perhaps simply push the enemy back. They are doing that now in some areas, but not in the Donbas. On the other hand, they are trying to make the war more costly through attacks on the Russian economy and refineries,” the same expert adds. “Perhaps the idea is to put pressure not on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, but on the elites, the oligarchs or the wealthy who are losing money, so they will pressure Putin and ask him to reach some agreement,” he suggests.

At the end of June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced on his Telegram channel the approval of a 40-day campaign to intensify drone strikes inside Russian territory to “influence the aggressor ‌state ⁠in order to press for an end to the war.”

Meanwhile, Kyiv is pushing to secure additional interceptors from its allies as it struggles to defend itself against Russia’s aerial attacks. According to Ukrainian authorities, allies supplied only one-third of the interceptors for U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems that they had delivered during the same period in 2025.

“Kyiv is well protected by air defence [...] The situation is different, however, when it comes to ballistic and Zircon missiles, which are shot down with Patriot interceptor missiles that Ukraine currently lacks,” says Olha Polishchuk, research director for Eastern Europe at ACLED, on the monitoring center’s website.

On August 5, 2026, Ukraine failed to intercept any of the 24 ballistic missiles or four Zircon cruise missiles launched by Russia in an attack on the capital region, although its Air Force said it shot down nearly 90% of the 115 drones involved. As a security measure, Ukraine has since stopped disclosing the number of missile interceptions and the number of ballistic missiles launched against its territory, Bloomberg reported.

“Ukraine is going to suffer a great deal in the coming months through civilian losses and some successful Russian strategic attacks,” writes Professor O’Brien. But he adds: “the Russian military is still failing badly this summer — and that will not change.”

The CIT analyst also does not expect significant advances on the front in the coming months: “We are seeing increased production of ballistic missiles, a weapon that is being used against all power plants and all systems. We believe [Putin] understands he will not be able to seize the Donbas this year, so his strategy for victory will probably consist simply of freezing Ukraine next winter.”

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