At least 16,071 Russian soldiers have died since Feb. 24, 2022, according to BBC Russia, which carries out a name-by-name count of the dead together with Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet.
One year into the war, the number of Russian military casualties verified through open sources has now surpassed the officially confirmed number of deaths of Soviet soldiers during the nine-year war in Afghanistan. Over 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in Afghanistan from 1979 until 1989.
BBC and Mediazona also identified that at least 1,366 of those killed since February 2022 were mobilized Russian conscripts. Some 40% of those had died in the past two months.
According to the journalists, most of those killed in action were from the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, Bashkiria, Buryatia, and Dagestan. Russia's total irretrievable losses which include wounded, killed or missing people may amount to at least 144,500 people.
