More than 450,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine war

More than 450,000 Russian military personnel have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a leaked database reportedly obtained from Russia's state statistics agency, Rosstat.

The data covers deaths recorded between the start of the war and August 28, 2026. The actual toll could rise as the figures do not include missing people or cases where death certificates are still being processed.

The leaked database, which emerged last week, was examined by several media organisations and independent experts, including Spanish newspaper El País, Bloomberg, Mediazona and Meduza.

The records were cross-checked against other publicly available information, including court documents and death certificates. The investigators found no indication that the data had been fabricated or artificially inflated.

Russia has not officially disclosed a comprehensive figure for its military deaths since the invasion began. The leaked records therefore provide an account from a Russian government source, although they were obtained through a cyberattack.

The BBC and Russian independent outlet Mediazona have separately maintained a list of identified Russian military deaths using publicly available sources. They had confirmed 285,881 deaths, while an analysis of Russian inheritance records suggested that the total number of fatalities had exceeded 350,000 by the end of 2025.

Military analyst Janis Kluge said the leaked figures were significant because they offered a direct source of information that could be checked against other records.

He said he had compared the database with Russian court documents and found that individuals named in those records also appeared in the leaked data.

The hacker groups Cyberpartisans BY and Silent Crow, which claimed responsibility for obtaining the information, said the figures covered deaths officially registered by Russia's civil registry offices.

Ukraine has not published an official total of its military deaths. It has, however, reported around 90,000 missing soldiers.

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies has estimated that between 125,000 and 150,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in the war.

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