News Feed

Mediazona confirms identities of over 40,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine

1 min read
Mediazona confirms identities of over 40,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine
A dead Russian soldier lies in a ditch beside the highway to Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, on Sept. 14, 2022. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin/The Kyiv Independent)

Through open source research, Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, together with BBC Russia, confirmed the names of 40,599 Russian soldiers who had been killed since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Since Mediazona's last update on Dec. 15, the names of 1,100 Russian soldiers have been added to the list of casualties.

The journalists specify that the actual figures are likely considerably higher since the information they have verified so far comes from public sources, including obituaries, posts by relatives, news in regional media, and reports by local authorities.

Since Russia's full-scare invasion began, almost 3,000 officers, with 341 holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher have been killed in combat in Ukraine. In contrast, there have been nearly 4,915 casualties among newly recruited Russian soldiers.

A majority of those killed in action come from Krasnodar, Sverdlovsk, Bashkiria, Chelyabinsk, and Moscow regions, as well as the Buryatia republic.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview with The Economist published on Jan. 1 that Russian forces are suffering heavy losses: "Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away."

Death toll from Dec. 29 strikes on Kyiv rises to 29 as more bodies pulled from rubble
At least 29 people were killed by Russia’s Dec. 29 mass strike on the capital, according to Serhii Popko, who heads the Kyiv City Military Administration.
Article image
Avatar
Olena Goncharova

Head of North America desk

Olena Goncharova is the Head of North America desk at The Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

Read more
News Feed

Seaborne crude flows averaged 3.12 million barrels a day over the four weeks to July 6, a 3% decline from the previous period ending June 29, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. That's the lowest level recorded since the four-week period ending Feb. 23.

Show More