Using open sources, Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, together with BBC Russia, established the names of 24,470 Russian soldiers who had been killed in the past 15 months of the full-scale war. The media carry out a name-by-name count of the dead.
Since the media's latest update on May 19, a total of 1,184 names have been added to the list of casualties. The journalists and volunteers now have also identified around 4,500 former prisoners and over 1,700 mercenaries who have been killed in Ukraine.
Mediazona explains that obituaries published in Russian newspapers and online rarely specify where exactly a fighter died. Moreover, a significant portion of the data comes not from public reports, but from cemeteries across Russia that volunteers visit. Nearly a dozen mass graves of Wagner fighters have been identified as of June 2.
BBC and Mediazona say that according to the most conservative estimates, Russia may have lost about 45,000 people. At the same time, Russia's total irretrievable losses, which include wounded, killed or missing, may amount to 203,000.
Fifteen months into the war, the number of Russian military casualties verified through open sources has long since 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.
Olena Goncharova
(Updated: )
