WARSAW: An independent investigation by Russian media outlet Mediazona, in collaboration with the BBC Russian Service, has identified over 66,000 Russian military personnel killed in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The updated figure, as of August 30, 2024, marks a notable rise from the 50,000 soldier deaths reported in April. Mediazona’s research, which utilizes open-source data and public records, shows that 66,471 Russian soldiers have been confirmed dead. The organization cautioned that this number is not definitive, as many deaths may not have been publicly reported.
Anastasia Alekseyeva, a journalist with Mediazona, clarified that the current death toll is not directly linked to recent battles or advances, such as Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region or Russia’s push in eastern Ukraine. Instead, the figure reflects ongoing efforts to process a backlog of reported deaths.
Among the reported casualties, 172 were conscripts serving national service, though these figures may be imprecise as some conscripts could have enlisted in professional contracts without informing their families. The southern republic of Bashkortostan reported the highest number of casualties, totaling 2,578.
The report also highlighted that over 12,000 of the deceased were prisoners recruited by Russia with promises of freedom after serving on the front lines. However, Mediazona’s editor Dmitry Treshchanin noted a decline in this recruitment strategy in recent months, suggesting that the drive to enlist prisoners is less active now.
The Mediazona and BBC team have been compiling these figures since February 2022, employing open-source information from official reports and media, supplemented by satellite imagery of Russian cemeteries to estimate the number of new graves.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in June that approximately 700,000 Russian soldiers were deployed in Ukraine. Officially, Moscow has been reluctant to disclose the full extent of its military losses, with the Russian defense ministry reporting 5,937 combat deaths as of September 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the first two years of the conflict, providing a comparative perspective on the heavy toll of the ongoing war.
