According to a report by independent Russian media outlet Mediazona on September 27, more than 71,000 Russian soldiers have been confirmed killed in Ukraine during the full-scale war. Mediazona, along with BBC News Russian, has been documenting the names of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine through open-source research. Since their last update in mid-September, the list of casualties has grown by 1,998 names.
The journalists note that the actual number of casualties is likely much higher, as their information comes from public sources such as obituaries, posts by relatives, regional media reports, and statements from local authorities. Since the start of the all-out war, over 4,100 officers have been killed in combat in Ukraine. The analysts also estimate that at least 13,175 Russian inmates have been killed on Ukraine’s eastern front.
According to Mediazona’s findings, a majority of those killed in action come from Rostov, Sverdlovsk, Bashkiria, and Chelyabinsk oblasts, as well as the Buryatia republic. The journalists also note a surge in recruitment by the Kremlin in predominantly Muslim regions such as Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, which has led to an increase in casualties in recent months. The recent Kharkiv offensive and Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast have resulted in some of the heaviest losses for Russian forces since the start of the war.
According to undisclosed sources and Western intelligence estimates, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on September 17 that approximately 1 million Ukrainians and Russians have been killed or wounded since February 2022, including civilians. The WSJ also claimed that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died during the war and around 400,000 were wounded, a number that some Ukrainian lawmakers have disputed as being exaggerated. In February of this year, President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that 180,000 Russian troops had been killed since the start of the all-out war, while over 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had also lost their lives.
Western officials have given similar estimates of Russian battlefield losses. As of September 27, 2024, the Ukrainian military estimates that 649,170 Russian troops have been killed in combat.
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