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More than 450,000 Russian citizens have been killed since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to leaked data from Russia’s state statistics agency Rosstat.
The figures, reported by The Moscow Times, highlight the devastating human cost of what has become Russia’s deadliest conflict since World War II. The death toll far exceeds the nearly 13,000 Soviet soldiers killed during the Soviet-Afghan war from 1979 to 1989.
Janis Kluge, head of the Russia and Eurasia division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told The Moscow Times that the leak was the most significant disclosure of Russian casualty data so far. He said the war had reached its deadliest stage yet.
Who was behind the cyberattack?
According to the report, two hacking groups, Belarusian Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow, launched cyberattacks on Rosstat’s website and regional portals between October 29 and November 1.
The groups, which Russia has designated as extremist organisations, claimed to have stolen a large volume of documents containing information on the country’s economy, demographic situation and military deaths in Ukraine.
Rosstat acknowledged a coordinated cyberattack on November 1 but denied that its databases had been hacked or that legally protected information had been leaked. The hackers’ claims could not be independently verified in full.
Silent Crow said its death count included active-duty military personnel as well as civilians killed in air strikes and during Ukraine’s 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. However, it excluded missing soldiers and the deaths of around 27,000 foreign nationals recruited into the Russian military, suggesting that the actual toll could be higher.
To assess the leaked material, The Moscow Times compared it with the open-source database “Counting the Dead”, maintained by Mediazona and BBC Russian. It checked a sample of 50 death records and found matches, although it could not independently authenticate the entire dataset.
Other international assessments have also pointed to heavy Russian losses. The British Defence Ministry said in early September that more than 500,000 people had been killed on Russia’s side of the war, while total casualties, including the wounded, could have reached 1.5 million.
High human cost of territorial gains
The leaked figures also illustrate the cost of Russia’s territorial advances. Since the full-scale invasion began, an average of 6.2 Russian deaths have been recorded for every square kilometre of Ukrainian territory captured.
The human cost of territorial gains has increased as the war has progressed. More recently, the number of recorded deaths has continued to rise even as Russian forces have made slower advances along the front line.
The impact has also been uneven across Russia’s ethnic communities. Researcher Maria Vyushkova told The Moscow Times that the government’s recruitment policies were threatening the survival of some smaller ethnic groups.
She said men from these communities were being encouraged to join the military through promises of higher salaries and substantial compensation for their families in the event of their deaths.
Prisoners have also been offered the opportunity to enlist, with military service providing a route out of prison for some convicts.
Vyushkova warned that some of the smaller ethnic communities could face the loss of a substantial share of their male population, putting their long-term survival at risk.
