Over 177,000 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 177,433 Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine as of Feb. 13.
Since the media outlets' last update in early February, the names of 9,291 Russian soldiers have been added to the list of casualties.
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, regional media reports, and statements from local authorities.
The confirmed death toll now includes over 57,200 volunteers, 21,400 recruited prisoners, and 17,000 mobilized soldiers, according to the media outlets. A total of 6,414 officers have also been confirmed to have been killed.
While Moscow does not disclose its casualty figures at all, President Volodymyr Zelensky told France TV in an interview on Feb. 4 that at least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale war. Kyiv largely avoided commenting on its losses for the first two years of the full-scale invasion, until Zelensky announced in February 2024 that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.
Zelensky also told France TV that Russia would continue to incur staggering losses if it attempted to conquer all of eastern Ukraine by force of arms. His comments come amid the latest round of trilateral peace talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S., where the status of Ukraine's eastern Donbas territory remains a major point of contention in negotiations.
Despite the heavy losses, Russia has been able to make marginal advances in Ukraine's front line region as it is able to offset its casualties through fresh contract soldiers. The Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState reported that Russian forces occupied 4,336 square kilometers (1,674 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in 2025, accounting for less than 1% of the country
The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces estimates that as of Feb. 13, Russia has lost around 1,250,950 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 22, 2022. The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured.
Mediazona 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.
