Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, at least 30,003 Russian soldiers have died at the front, of which 3,167 were mobilized. Their identities were established by journalists from Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service.
In their study, based on data from open sources (obituaries in the media, messages on social networks of relatives of the victims, and so on), journalists from publications noted that over the past two weeks, the number of deaths from the Moscow region has increased on the list. However, this is due to an increase in detection, and not to the situation at the front.
The largest category of war dead, according to investigators, remains prisoners (5637 people) and mobilized (3167 people).
The journalists also reported that from February 24, 2022 to August 11, 2023, they identified more than 2,400 Russian officers who died in Ukraine, with 284 of them in the rank of lieutenant colonel and above.
In terms of the number of losses confirmed by journalists among the regions of Russia, the leaders are Sverdlovsk Region (1113 dead), Krasnodar Territory (1071 dead) and Bashkortostan (932 dead). It is also known about 297 dead from Moscow and 293 from St. Petersburg.
Earlier, journalists from Meduza and Mediazona reported that during the 15 months of the war, the total number of Russian soldiers killed in the war against Ukraine amounted to about 47,000 people. For the calculation, the investigators used data from the register of inheritance cases of the Federal Notary Chamber and data from Rosstat.
“In 2022, about 25,000 men under 50 died in the war, and by May 27, 2023, about 47,000. To be as accurate as possible, the death toll lies between 40,000 and 55,000 with a 95% probability,” they say. journalists.
The Russian side does not officially publish data on the dead. The last time the Ministry of Defense reported on losses was in September 2022. Then Sergei Shoigu said that 5,937 soldiers were killed. This number has nothing to do with reality: even then, there were more names in the list of the dead, collected from open sources, investigators point out.
Dmitry Treschanin, editor of Mediazona, spoke on the air of Current Time in detail about how journalists made calculations based on open data:
