By Russian Euronews
Published on
Hacker groups Kiberpartizany BY and Silent Crow claim to have carried out a large-scale breach of the Russian Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat).
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According to the hackers, they managed to steal around 23 terabytes of data, including internal documents, demographic and economic statistics, as well as information on Russian losses in the war against Ukraine.
The resulting data allowed the groups to make their own calculations of the number of people killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
According to Kiberpartizany BY, as of August 27, 2026, at least 393,881 Russian citizens have been killed during the war. Silent Crow gives an even higher figure of 450,100 deaths.
This significant difference in estimates is due to the use of different loss accounting methods.
Kiberpartizany BY counted deaths where military action or its consequences were cited as the cause.
Silent Crow, on the other hand, not only includes people killed in combat, but also adds several other categories of deaths: non-combat losses of military personnel, deaths classified as terrorist acts, and deaths of people registered in Russia but died in the occupied territories or Ukraine where the exact cause of death has not been established.
Why these numbers are particularly important
Russia has not released official combat casualty statistics since September 2022.
Additionally, starting in 2024, Rosstat stopped publishing annual data on causes of death, making an independent assessment of the demographic impact of the war much more difficult.
In this context, access to the agency’s internal statistical documents could make it possible to more precisely assess the extent of human losses.
For comparison, as of November 8, the joint database of BBC News Russian Service and Mediazona, which compiles a list of dead Russian servicemen identified by name, contained approximately 286,000 names. However, this list is known to be incomplete, especially for the most recent months of the war.
In a joint study by Meduza and Mediazona, based on the analysis of inheritance register data, the number of Russian servicemen who fell in combat by the end of 2025 was estimated at around 350,000.
In this way, the hackers’ estimates are consistent with figures from previously published independent studies, although this does not yet prove the accuracy of each individual figure.
Check the authenticity of the data
Meduza and Mediazona said they had access to the data published by the hackers and began verifying it.
Journalists seek to determine not only whether the documents are authentic, but also how complete the information they contain is. In particular, they must exclude the possibility of deliberate falsification of data.
Additionally, causes of death listed in medical documents do not always reflect the actual circumstances of a person’s death.
It should also be noted that Rosstat’s internal databases do not contain up-to-date information on missing persons. These people can only be declared dead after a long time.
Therefore, even data from the national statistics agency cannot automatically provide a definitive figure for Russian military losses.
If the authenticity and completeness of the leak are confirmed, the obtained documents could become one of the greatest sources of information on the demographic consequences of the war for Russia.
Gn world
