Over 121,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine identified by media investigation
Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, in collaboration with the BBC Russian service, has confirmed the identities of 121,507 Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine.
The publications' latest report covers the period of February 24, 2022 to July 31, 2025. Since it was last updated at the start of July, 2,353 additional Russian military personnel have been confirmed killed.
The journalists note that the actual figures are likely significantly higher, as their verified information comes from public sources such as obituaries, posts by relatives, memorial community tree-plantings, regional media reports, statements from local authorities, among other sources.
Moscow and Kyiv rarely officially report their losses. Ukraine estimates that Russia's overall casualties during the full-scale war have surpassed 1 million.
In a briefing to reported on Aug. 12, President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Russian losses are approximately three times greater than that of Ukraine, without specifying the total number of losses suffered.
In an podcast interview on Aug. 12, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that 60,000 Russian soldiers were killed in July, while U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Aug. 1 that the number stood closer to 20,000.
The reported death toll now includes 33,100 volunteers, 18,000 recruited prisoners, and 13,300 mobilized soldiers, according to the media outlets. Over 5,400 officers have also been confirmed to have been killed.
Amid renewed summer offensives in multiple sectors of the front, Russia has steadily gained ground in eastern Ukraine and Kursk Oblast in recent months but at the cost of heavy casualties as well as equipment losses. Among other units, internal documents published on July 17 by Ukraine's "I Want to Live" government project show that Russia's 41st Combined Arms Army fighting in eastern Ukraine has suffered "catastrophic" losses.
Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of the Prisoners of War (POWs) said on June 12 said that more than 100,000 Russian families have contacted a Ukrainian-run initiative in search of information about missing Russian soldiers.
As of Aug. 12, Ukraine's General Staff estimates that Russia has lost 1,065,220 troops in Ukraine since the start of the war on Feb. 24, 2022. The numbers are largely in-line with estimates made by Western intelligence agencies.
The Kyiv Independent cannot independently verify the total number of casualties sustained by either side.
The outlet published the complete list of identified casualties for the first time in February, marking three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the publication, volunteers manually enter and verify each record to prevent duplicate entries in the database.
