By the summer of this year, Russia had lost at least 450,000 soldiers killed in the war with Ukraine. The actual number of deaths over this period is likely to be much higher, according to an analysis by the Financial Times of documents leaked from Russia’s statistical agency.
About 120,000 deaths — a third of the total number of cases in which the documents specify a place of death — are linked to the Avdiivka and Pokrovsk area. These towns were the sites of some of the war’s fiercest battles. Another 48,000 deaths are linked to the neighbouring Bakhmut district.
Experts believe such losses will prevent Russia from continuing to conduct offensive operations on a similar scale, because if you look at the peak months of attacks last year, Russia was losing tens of thousands of people each month, while the country’s official recruitment target is 35,000 new recruits a month. In other words, recruitment rates are insufficient to offset the losses.
The fighting for each of these towns separately cost Russia more lives than the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979–1989, which, according to official figures, claimed the lives of about 15,000 service personnel. In the US war in Vietnam, 58,000 Americans were killed.
The documents, published after a hacking attack by Belarusian and Ukrainian activist groups Cyberpartisans BY and Silent Crow, make it possible to see the official mortality data the Russian state had as of August. Overall, the dataset contains information on 11.5 million deaths.
The database directly lists about 410,000 deaths linked to the war. The overwhelming majority of those killed are service personnel, although some may have been civilians mistakenly classified in the documents.
In addition, the FT identified a further roughly 12,000 likely deaths of service personnel, determined by age, place of death and the status of the deceased. This refers to Russian men of conscription age who died at or near the front, including in the Pokrovsk area.
Rosstat also recorded 42,000 deaths of men of conscription age established through court procedures, which are used in cases where families cannot recover the body of the deceased.
At the same time, the real number of deaths is understated because of delays in registering deaths. Some delays are substantial: in 2026, documents were still being processed for people who died during the siege of Mariupol in 2022. Based on documents already submitted, the FT estimates that the total number of war-related deaths by the beginning of August will reach approximately 550,000. Almost all of those killed are men.
The FT’s estimates are consistent with the results of other statistical methods of analysis, including a study of excess mortality among men of conscription age compared with pre-war levels. If one assumes that the mortality rate recorded in January persisted throughout the year, then by the end of December the death toll will reach 650,000.
One trend visible in the data is the ageing of the Russian armed forces. About 10% of those killed were aged 18 to 24, but the share of this age group has declined compared with the start of the war. In 2025, the average age of those killed was 40, whereas in the first year of the war it was 34. The largest group of those killed were men aged 35 to 44 — 158,000 people.
The figures also reflect the uneven distribution of the 2022 mobilisation, which disproportionately affected certain ethnic minorities, as well as a trend towards more active recruitment of men from poorer regions of Russia.
Zabaykalsky Krai, home to one of the largest Buryat communities, had one of the highest rates of registered deaths among the regions. About 12,300 people from there were killed — roughly one death for every 80 residents of the region. In Bashkortostan, which is also home to a significant share of ethnic minorities, 15,800 people were killed.
The data also show the involvement of foreign nationals in the war: the FT identified 4,141 likely foreign service personnel whose deaths are recorded in the database. The highest number of death reports came in autumn 2025 — about 390 cases a month. This coincided with a period of a sharp intensification of the Russian offensive in the Pokrovsk area.
The biggest losses among foreigners are linked to countries in Central Asia, Africa and Latin America — regions from which Russia is actively recruiting service personnel.
Among Central Asian countries, the highest number of deaths was recorded in Uzbekistan — 807 people — followed by Tajikistan with 598 deaths. The highest losses in Latin America were recorded in Colombia — 98 people. In Nigeria, Cameroon and Egypt combined, 127 people were killed. The data also indicate the deaths of 20 Bangladeshi citizens, 10 Indian citizens and 44 Nepali citizens. In addition, the deaths of about 500 holders of Belarusian passports are reported.
There is not a single North Korean service member in the database, despite North Korea’s participation in Russia’s war effort.
Although the documents list 745 dead Ukrainians, the FT did not include them in its estimates, since an unusually large share of these deaths likely relates to civilians. Ukrainians fighting on Russia’s side may be registered as citizens of the Russian Federation or of entities it controls.
- At the beginning of November it became known that cyberattacks on the information resources of Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) had been ongoing since 29 October.
- It was reported that earlier hackers posted a message in Belarusian on the website: “No one will escape responsibility.” The same messages appeared on the pages of the agency’s regional offices. The hacked site also displayed the logos of the hacker groups “Cyberpartisans BY” and Silent Crow. The latter said it had “compromised and destroyed Rosstat’s internal IT infrastructure”.
- Yesterday Bloomberg wrote that, according to Rosstat, 11,335 deaths of foreigners linked to the war against Ukraine have been registered. Those killed came from almost 100 countries worldwide. At the same time, the real number of foreign troops who died fighting on Russia’s side could be significantly higher.
- Meanwhile, according to Ukraine’s General Staff, since the start of 2026 Russian army losses in manpower have reached 301,030 service personnel killed and wounded.