Russian losses amount to nearly 220,000 killed as of August, media reports
Russia has lost close to 220,000 people killed in the war against Ukraine as of August, according to estimates by independent news outlets Mediazona and Meduza published on Aug. 29.
The news underscores Russia's soaring losses over three and a half years of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, making it Moscow's most costly conflict since World War II.
While the journalists were able to confirm 125,681 deaths as of this month based on open sources like obituaries and media reporting, this figure likely does not reflect the full scope of losses, as not every death is publicly known.
The two outlets estimate that 219,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the war overall, based on their own methodology that uses both the confirmed cases and the register of inheritance cases.
Using the register, the investigation pinpointed a new record for male mortality in Russia in November 2024, about 3,000 people per week.
The journalists noted that they cannot confirm that the losses in late 2024 were really that high, as the accuracy of the calculations begins to decline from that point, possibly due to a wave of lawsuits to declare military personnel missing or dead that still await a court ruling.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the figures.
The Ukrainian military claims Russian casualties surpass 1 million killed, wounded, and captured as of August, a figure largely in line with Western estimates. Moscow does not disclose its casualty figures.
A June study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that 400,000 Ukrainian troops have also been killed or wounded since 2022, a tally close to the figure provided by President Volodymyr Zelensky in December.
Despite the heavy losses, Russia has been able to make advances in Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine's east as it is able to offset its casualties through fresh contract soldiers. In turn, Kyiv faces increasingly serious manpower shortages, particularly among infantry units holding the front line.
Zelensky said in January that Ukraine's military fields some 880,000 soldiers in the face of a 600,000-strong Russian invasion force, though Moscow holds numerical advantage in certain areas due to the concentration of forces.
