On July 16, speaking at the Defense and Innovation Summit in Pennsylvania, CIA Director John Ratcliffe shared the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the life expectancy of a Russian soldier on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Our intelligence aligns with some of the open-source information you may have seen coming out of Ukraine. The average life expectancy of a Russian recruit arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine right now is estimated at 20 to 30 minutes,” Ratcliffe stated, adding that the reason is AI-powered attack drones, which have become “specialized and inexpensive killing machines.”

According to the CIA Director, Russia has seized only about 1% of Ukraine’s territory over the past 18 months, with advances having effectively stalled due to the mass deployment of Ukrainian drone technologies.

Independent confirmation of the scale of losses was provided by the authoritative think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which on July 1, 2026, published a study titled “Russian Blood and Treasure: The Ballooning Costs of Putin’s War” by Seth Jones and Riley McCabe. The analysts reviewed more than 20,000 documented instances of strikes on Russian targets.

Key findings of the report:

  • From February 2022 through June 2026, the Russian military lost approximately 1.4 million personnel killed, wounded, and missing, of whom 400,000–450,000 represent irreversible losses (killed in action).
  • Combined casualties on both sides of the war have exceeded 2 million — the highest figure for any major power since World War II.
  • The casualty ratio, which for most of the war stood at 2:1–3:1 against Russia, rose to nearly 8:1 in the first half of 2026.
  • Russia’s monthly combat losses (30,000–34,000) now exceed its recruitment rate (approximately 27,000 per month) — the Russian army is losing personnel faster than it can replace them.
  • In spring 2026, Russia-controlled territory in Ukraine began to shrink for the first time — a net reduction of approximately 400 km² over April–May.

Russia’s losses in Ukraine, according to the report’s authors, are more than four times the total U.S. combat losses in all wars since World War II — and nearly nine times the combined losses of the USSR and Russia over the same period, including Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Ratcliffe’s statement came against the backdrop of increased Western funding for Ukraine’s drone industry. On July 15 in Kyiv, during a visit marking Ukrainian Statehood Day, the European Commission and Ukraine signed the “Drone Deal” — a defense industry partnership designed to combine Ukrainian combat expertise with EU manufacturing capacity.