Hackers claim leaked Russian data reveals up to 450,000 war-related deaths in Ukraine
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Hacker groups Belarusian Cyberpartisans and Silent Crow, which claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Russia's Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), said on Nov. 7 that leaked death records indicate between 394,000 and 450,000 people fighting on Russia's side or otherwise linked to the war have died since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The groups said they obtained the records from Rosstat's internal Demography database, containing information from death certificates registered between February 2022 and August 2026.
Belarusian Cyberpartisans, a group of anonymous hacktivists opposing the regime of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, estimated at least 393,881 deaths based on records explicitly identifying military operations as the cause.
Silent Crow published a higher estimate of up to 450,100 deaths, using a broader methodology that also included non-combat deaths of military personnel and certain deaths recorded without a specified cause.
According to estimates based on data from the Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState, Russia has gained control of approximately 73,000 square kilometers (28,200 square miles) of Ukrainian territory since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Comparing that figure with Silent Crow's estimate of up to 450,100 war-related deaths would amount to roughly six deaths for every square kilometer of territory seized, although the hackers' casualty figures have not been independently verified.
The Kyiv Independent could not immediately verify the authenticity of the leaked records or the groups' casualty estimates.
The hackers said they had gained access to Rosstat's network approximately six months before launching the attack, systematically collecting internal documents and other data before targeting the agency's IT infrastructure overnight on Oct. 31–Nov. 1.
Rosstat acknowledged that its systems had been targeted in cyberattacks between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1 but denied that its databases had been compromised or information leaked.
The agency later reported disruptions to some of its services and extended deadlines for submitting certain statistical data.
Russia does not disclose its military casualties in Ukraine, making independent assessments difficult.
As of Nov. 6, independent Russian outlet Mediazona, working with BBC Russian and volunteers, had identified 285,881 Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine through open-source research. The journalists have repeatedly stressed that their verified count is incomplete and that the actual death toll is considerably higher.
