Journalists from Mediazona and BBC Russia identified the names of 50,471 Russian military personnel who have died in Ukraine since February 2022.

The actual number of Russian deaths is around 85,000, journalists assert.

There are at least 3,354 officers among the deceased.

Since the fall of 2023, the losses of the Russian army against the background of offensive attempts in the Donetsk region began to escalate significantly. Journalists say they discover around 1,200 new names each week.

Journalists find names of the killed soldiers through open sources: eulogies, articles in the media, etc.

Using mathematical methods based on excess mortality data, journalists concluded that by December 2023, at least 75,000 of Russian military personnel had died in Ukraine.

Russia continues the overall trend of replacing professional soldiers with civilians — volunteers, convicts, and mobilized. There are now significantly fewer professional military servicemen among the dead.

About 18% of confirmed losses are prisoners, 13% are volunteers, 12% are mobilized, the rest are professional military servicemen.

However, in over a quarter of confirmed deaths the journalists were unable to find out the category.

Kuban region which is near the border with Ukraine has the highest count of casualties.

Casualties by region.

Journalists noticed that since the mass protests in Bashkortostan several months ago, the number of casualties from that region sharply increased.

During the first 6 months of the war in 2022, when the regular Russian army took part in the invasion of Ukraine, without volunteers, conscripts or prisoners, most deaths were in the 21-23 year old group.

But by now, most deaths are among those who are over 30.

Volunteers and mobilized are much older. Volunteers are over 30-35, and mobilized are over 25.

It’s important to note that the numbers by Mediazona do not include those soldiers who were mobilized and contracted on the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, which Russia occupied in 2014.

The regiments from Luhansk and Donetsk suffered huge casualties during the first months of the war, as men there were mobilized into the army before Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Russian journalists from Mediazona/BBC do not include these casualties in their numbers.

So, in total, mortal losses of Russia’s occupational forces are certainly over 100,000. And then, there are tens of thousands of severely wounded and incapacitated.

Plus there are thousands of “missing in action” – Russian captives talk about fields of dead bodies they have to step over when sent on assault of Ukrainian positions. There are no attempts by Russians to retrieve these bodies. They just lie there, rotting.

The accumulated losses as reported by Ukraine include non-mortal casualties, as well as numbers from the units recruited in Donetsk and Luhansk.

By now, Russia has lost over 7,000 tanks and 13,700 armoires personnel carriers, as well as over 11,500 artillery pieces.

The numbers of casualties and equipment losses listed by Ukraine are confirmed by videos or photos. Example of the videos in the comments below.