More than 400,000 Russians have been killed fighting in Ukraine since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion almost five years ago, according to data disclosed by the country’s statistics agency, Rosstat.
The information, obtained by Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans and Ukrainian hacker collective Silent Crow, contains more than 11 million death certificates, including details on the deceased’s age, place of residence and place of death.
It was then shared with the Guardian and a small group of other media outlets.
According to the data, 412,576 death certificates explicitly linked deaths to war, either through official cause of death codes or written references to combat and military operations.
The figures underscore the appalling human toll of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with no end in sight despite a new round of peace talks planned in Abu Dhabi this week.
The two hacker groups announced the flaw on November 1 and published the data this weekend. Rosstat confirmed it had been hacked but denied that sensitive information had been obtained.
The dataset offers an unprecedentedly accurate picture of Russian wartime losses, which Moscow has sought to conceal. Russian authorities have not published a toll since the first months of the invasion, and information on military losses is treated as a state secret.
The Guardian was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the data set. However, the figures are broadly consistent with other estimates of Russian losses. British intelligence estimated in September that around 500,000 Russian troops had been killed since the invasion began.
Furthermore, the independent Russian media Mediazona identified by name nearly 286,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, based on official documents, obituaries from social networks and photographs of tombstones. The media estimates that the true toll is closer to half a million.
“The data looks authentic and very rich,” said Janis Kluge, head of the Russia and Eurasia division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“This is the biggest data leak when it comes to Russian casualties,” added Kluge, who has extensively studied Russian war statistics.
The dataset likely underestimates the true death toll. Some soldiers remain missing, while others have never been identified.
Kluge also pointed to a significant delay between deaths and their entry into official records, which he said typically took about six months.
“We are probably closer to 500,000 Russian troops killed than 400,000,” he said.
The figures also reveal the uneven burden of war across Russia, with poorer and more remote regions suffering disproportionate losses.
In Buryatia, Tuva and Transbaikalia, three regions in eastern Russia, war-related deaths accounted for about a third of all deaths among men aged 18 to 49 between the start of the invasion and mid-2024. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the equivalent figure was around 10%.
There was also a sharp increase in the number of deaths on Russian battlefields as the war dragged on, with some of the deadliest months occurring in late 2024 and 2025.
Kluge, who analyzed the data, said the number of soldiers killed in several months during that period exceeded 15,000, or about 500 per day.
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“At the end of 2024 and into 2025, you’ll see that the multi-month numbers are above 15,000 per month, and that’s higher, I think, than most estimates,” Kluge said. “That’s 500 a day, over 500 a day. Certainly shocking.”
The scale of the losses is staggering by any measure and unprecedented in modern Russian history.
In less than five years, the number of Russian military deaths in Ukraine is estimated to have been more than eight times the cumulative toll of all Soviet and Russian wars between the end of World War II and the start of the full-scale invasion. This figure also exceeds the number of American military personnel who died during World War II.
Rather than pushing Moscow toward a settlement, the scale of the losses risks strengthening Vladimir Putin’s resolve, according to a person close to the Russian president’s thinking.
“Putin understands these numbers, and if he now settles for less than all he wants, it would amount to a betrayal of himself and the people,” the person said.
Top Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are set to meet in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday for the first U.S.-brokered peace talks between them in nine months.
Previous negotiations have made little progress toward ending the war, with Moscow demanding that Ukraine withdraw from parts of the Donbass region it still controls.
Neither Putin nor his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will participate in the negotiations. Instead, both countries will send high-level delegations, with Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner also expected to attend.
In an article on X, Witkoff said the negotiations would focus on “post-war security arrangements, de-escalation” and humanitarian issues.
European governments have expressed concern that negotiations could extend beyond Ukraine and into broader European security issues, including Moscow’s long-standing demands for a reduction in NATO’s military presence in countries bordering Russia.
The French foreign minister said Paris would participate in the negotiations, but the Kremlin later denied that France would be represented there.
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