Body bags of fallen soldiers in a field near the front line in the Bakhmut area, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, Aug. 1, 2024. Photo: Nikoletta Stoyanova / EPA / Scanpix / LETA
A new investigation published on Monday by exiled Russian independent media outlets Meduza and Mediazona estimates that more than 160,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The latest figure, released to coincide with the third anniversary of the invasion, more than doubles the 75,000 deaths previously estimated by Meduza and Mediazona last year.
The researchers based their findings on comparisons between lists of deceased Russian soldiers and data from Russia’s inheritance registry, allowing them to develop a statistical estimate of Moscow’s overall losses.
The data indicates a sharp increase in casualties each year: while an estimated 20,000 Russian soldiers died in 2022, the estimated death toll for 2023 more than doubled to 50,000, and surged even further to nearly 100,000 in 2024.
Mediazona has also released all of its information concerning the 95,323 confirmed Russian military deaths identified through an ongoing open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigation conducted in partnership with BBC News Russian and a team of volunteers. The database, titled “Russia 200” in a nod to the Soviet-era military code for the bodies of soldiers killed in action (KIA) — “cargo 200” — is currently only available in Russian. It allows one to search for KIA soldiers by name, as well as filter them by region, service branch, and rank.
Experts interviewed by the BBC in January stressed that the actual death toll is likely much higher than confirmed figures suggest, as only 45 to 65% of Russian fatalities in Ukraine are believed to have been documented. Researchers rely primarily on open-source data — including social media posts, obituaries in Russian media, and evidence from new gravesites across Russia — to compile their estimates.
Official Russian casualty figures have remained scarce throughout the three years of war. The last official death toll, reported by former Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu in September 2022, stood at just 5,937 soldiers killed.
In contrast, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported in December that close to 43,000 Ukrainian military personnel had been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion. Zelensky also claimed that Russian losses were significantly higher, estimating that 198,000 troops had been killed and more than 550,000 wounded.
A confidential Ukrainian estimate cited by The Wall Street Journal from mid-2024 put the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000.
Cargo 200 (Груз 200, Gruz 200) is a Soviet and Russian military code used to refer to the transportation of military personnel who have died in service. Specifically, it denotes the transportation of soldiers’ bodies back to their homeland in sealed zinc coffins.