More than 66,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine amid the full-scale war, according to a report by independent Russian media outlet Mediazona on Aug. 30.
Mediazona, along with BBC News Russian, has been documenting the names of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine through open-source research.
The report stated that at least 12,813 prisoners recruited from prisons, 12,566 volunteers, and 8,610 mobilized troops have died while serving in Russian forces during the war.
The journalists also investigated the deaths of Russian conscripts, who, according to the Russian command, are not deployed in combat operations. However, the report found that at least 172 conscripts had been killed.
Some of these conscripts were sent to Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 and were later withdrawn. Others were killed under fire in Russian border areas, the report said. Some conscripts who served as mariners also died in the sinking of the cruiser Moskva on April 13–14, 2022.
The deaths of conscripts do not account for possible losses during Ukraine’s recent offensive in Russia's Kursk Oblast, the report noted.
In July 2024, Meduza and Mediazona estimated that at least 120,000 Russian soldiers had died in the invasion, based on probate and inheritance records. Ukraine’s General Staff estimated Russian military personnel losses surpassed 500,000 as of May 25, 2024, including those killed, wounded, missing, and captured.
In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 180,000 Russian troops had been killed since the start of the all-out war. The president said that over 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed during the same time.
Western officials gave similar estimates about Russian battlefield losses.
Leo Docherty, British minister of state for the Armed Forces, said in late April the U.K. estimates Russian losses to be over 450,000.
Francis Farrell
