The Russia – Ukraine war is not like the normal World War II, style conflicts or the Iraq or Afghanistan invasion.

This is a completely different type of warfare with a very high number of casualties. Drones have totally changed how wars are fought.

Apart from attack drones, there are thousands of others in the sky monitoring every action and movement. Once you are spotted, an attack drone is sent, and you are finished.

There are several types of attack drones. There are one-way FPV drones, just normal drones fitted with grenades, that are flown directly to destroy a vehicle or personnel.
Then there are drones that carry several grenades. They fly over targets, drop the explosives, and return to base.
Another major game changer is the fibre-optic drone.

These drones are connected to the operator using a thin fibre-optic cable. They cannot be stopped by signal jamming. They can penetrate buildings, rubble, or dugouts where infantry are hiding.

Many personnel on both sides are eliminated before they even see their enemies or fire the first shot.
That is why this is totally different warfare from what we are used to.

BBC and Mediazona track the number of Russian soldiers who have died using open-source resources such as obituaries, graves, and official Russian army unit Telegram channels. So far, they have identified about 168,000 deaths.

Nobody officially tracks Ukrainian casualties, but the number is believed to be similar or slightly lower, around 140,000.
Then there are even more listed as Missing in Action.

These are people who were either killed in action and their remains were never recovered, or those captured as prisoners of war.

These figures only represent those killed in action. There are also many others who have lost limbs, suffered severe injuries, or developed mental trauma and can no longer return to the battlefield.
That number is usually three to five times higher than those killed.

So we are talking about almost 1 million casualties on both sides.
To put this into perspective, Russia invaded Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 and lost only about 15,000 killed and 35,000 wounded in ten years.

Now compare that to roughly 1 million casualties in just three years.