Russia lost 2,980 troops killed and seriously wounded on 8 November, its heaviest daily toll of the full-scale war, Ukraine's General Staff said. It is the third such record in under three weeks. Ukraine's drone pilots set a record of their own that day, and Russia's losses for 2026 have now passed 400,000.

Russia keeps sending infantry at Ukraine's lines day after day, and Ukraine increasingly answers with drones. Germany's defense minister sees no Russian progress on the ground, only enormous losses. The toll keeps climbing as US, Ukrainian, and Russian officials head into talks in Abu Dhabi. Ukraine's daily figures cannot be checked independently, but outside counts point the same way. The BBC has named 285,023 dead Russian soldiers so far.

A new daily high, a week after the last one

The previous record, 2,500, came in the General Staff's report of 2 November. The one before it, 2,250, came on 22 October, Ukrainian news site Liga counted. The General Staff compared the new toll to more than six crews of the cruiser Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet flagship Ukraine sank in 2022. That works out to one Russian soldier every 29 seconds, it said.

Russia has lost 400,410 troops since 1 January, crossing the 400,000 mark on the record day. For all of 2025, its losses came to 418,170 killed and wounded, the General Staff said in January. Its overall tally since February 2022 now stands at about 1,609,380.

The General Staff blamed Russia's commanders for the toll. “The Russian command keeps driving units into suicidal assaults,” it wrote, while Ukraine's troops stop those attacks day after day.

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Ukraine's drone pilots break their record for the third time in eight days

Pilots of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces killed or wounded 801 Russian troops on 8 November, their commander, Robert Brovdi, callsign Madyar, wrote on Telegram. The previous highs were 751 on 5 November and 708 on 1 November, he added. On the record day, his pilots took out one Russian soldier every 1.8 minutes.

From 1 to 8 November, the drone force hit 5,492 Russian troops, an average of 687 a day. Its pilots destroyed or hit 2,611 Russian targets in all on 8 November alone, Brovdi said.