Independent Russian media outlet Mediazona has reported that more than 66,000 Russian military personnel have died during the war in Ukraine, according to its estimates. The outlet has been working with the BBC Russian Service to compile a list of known soldier deaths using open-source data. In April, they announced that they had found over 50,000 names of Russians killed, and as of August 30, they have identified 66,471 Russian soldiers killed in the war. The list continues to grow, with more than 4,600 new names added in the last four weeks, although it is not a definitive figure due to many deaths not being made public.
Journalist Anastasia Alekseyeva from Mediazona clarified that the latest death numbers are not related to Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region or Russia’s advance in the east. Researchers are still processing a backlog of death reports, leading to delays in updating the list. The report also highlighted that 172 conscripts doing national service have been killed in the war, with the highest figures seen in the early months. However, these figures may be inaccurate as conscripts can sign professional army contracts, which some may have done without informing their relatives.
The region with the highest absolute number of deaths, according to Mediazona’s breakdown, is the southern republic of Bashkortostan, which has a significant Muslim population. The most represented age group among the deceased was 33-35, with 6,877 deaths. More than 12,000 of the dead were prisoners, as Russia had attempted to recruit inmates by offering them freedom after a period of service on the front line. However, recruitment has slowed down recently, indicating a decrease in the recruitment drive’s activity.
Mediazona and the BBC, supported by volunteers, have been tracking Russian soldier deaths since February 2022. They use open-source information from official reports and the media, as well as satellite images of Russian cemeteries to estimate the number of new graves. Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously stated that almost 700,000 Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine, but Moscow rarely discloses the losses it has suffered during the conflict, which it refers to as a “special military operation.” In contrast, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the first two years of the war.
The Defense Ministry in September 2022 reported that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in combat. The estimates provided by Mediazona shed light on the significant number of casualties being faced by Russian military personnel during the war in Ukraine, raising concerns about the human cost of the conflict. The ongoing effort to document the names of soldiers who have lost their lives in the war serves as a grim reminder of the toll of the ongoing conflict and the need for transparency and accountability in reporting casualties. The discrepancies in the official figures and the independent estimates further highlight the challenges in obtaining accurate information about the true scale of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the war.
