The Russia-Ukraine war is approaching its five-year mark. In February 2022, Moscow launched a full-scale military offensive against Ukraine. Given Russia’s overwhelming military superiority, it was initially assumed that Ukraine would be unable to sustain resistance for long. However, bolstered by military and financial aid from Western nations—along with their own determined resistance—Kyiv has managed to keep the war going. This prolonged conflict has resulted in massive casualties on both sides. Now, leaked Russian government documents have revealed the grim reality of the death toll among the country’s troops, indicating that more than 400,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the war in Ukraine.
This information was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian last Tuesday, following an analysis of leaked documents from Rosstat, Russia’s state statistical agency.
According to the report, the data was jointly gathered by “Cyber Partisans”—a hacker group linked to the Belarusian opposition—and “Silent Crow,” a Ukraine-based hacker collective. By launching a cyberattack on Russian databases, they managed to obtain over 11 million death certificates. These documents contain various details, including the age of the deceased, their permanent addresses, and the locations where they died.
The two hacker groups disclosed the cyberattack on November 1, and subsequently released the stolen data late last week. While Rosstat acknowledged that it had been the target of a cyberattack, it claimed that no critical or sensitive information had been compromised.
The leaked documents shed light on the scale of Russian military casualties in the Ukraine war—data that Moscow had long kept secret. A few months into the conflict, Russian authorities stopped publishing regular statistics on military fatalities, classifying information regarding the deaths of soldiers in military operations as a state secret.
Among the leaked records, 412,576 death certificates were found to be directly linked to the war, with the documents explicitly citing military operations or combat as the cause of death. Although The Guardian noted that it has not been possible to independently verify the authenticity of all the leaked documents, the information aligns significantly with figures provided by other international organizations and research institutions.
An assessment by UK intelligence agencies last September indicated that approximately 500,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona has identified the names of about 286,000 fallen soldiers; the outlet estimates that the actual death toll could be closer to 500,000.
Janis Kluge, head of the Russia and Eurasia division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, considers the leaked data credible. He describes it as the most substantial leak of information regarding Russian military casualties to date.
However, the researcher points out that these documents do not provide a complete account of the actual death toll. He explains that many Russian soldiers remain missing, and the identities of others have yet to be confirmed. Furthermore, it can take up to six months for a soldier’s death to be officially recorded; consequently, the actual number of fatalities may well exceed the figures contained in the leaked documents.
An analysis of the documents reveals an uneven impact of the war across different regions of Russia. The data shows that military death rates are disproportionately higher in the country’s poorer and more remote areas—most notably in the eastern regions of Buryatia, Tuva, and Zabaykalsky Krai.
According to the data, from the onset of the war through mid-2024, approximately one-third of all deaths among men aged 18 to 49 in these regions were linked to the conflict. In contrast, in the capital, Moscow, and in St. Petersburg, war-related fatalities accounted for about 10 percent of all deaths among men in the same age group.
As the war has dragged on, the number of Russian military casualties has continued to rise. An analysis of leaked documents reveals that the Russian military experienced its highest number of casualties between late 2024 and the first few months of 2025.
According to estimates by German researcher Janis Kluge, more than 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed each month during that period—averaging nearly 500 deaths per day in some months. The leaked documents provide a glimpse into the immense human toll that this protracted war has exacted on the Russian armed forces.
Source: The Guardian
