The BBC (Russian service) in collaboration with the Mediazona website and a group of volunteers managed to identify from open sources the names of 24,005 Russian soldiers who were killed in Ukraine. A third of these losses are people who before the invasion had no connection with the army, that is, they were volunteers, conscripts, prisoners and men of the “Wagner” mercenary organization.

In the last two weeks the names of 1,361 fallen were identified, number exceeding the average number of weekly losses during 2022.

“These are only those figures that we can find and verify from open sources, that is, the real number of losses is even higher,” writes the BBC. At the same time, he assumes that the list of names he has compiled includes twice as few names of fallen, who are buried in Russia. “We came to this conclusion – as he points out – by studying the situation in cemeteries in more than 65 populated places during the last 15 months.”

“Thus according to the most conservative estimates, Russia may have lost 48,000 people during the invasion of Ukraine.”

Russia’s losses, taking into account those who were put out of action due to injury or death, could reach at least 216,000, according to the observations of the US Center for Military and Naval Research, since, as it points out, there are an average of three and a half wounded for every dead person .

This number does not include those who fought on the side of Russia and belonged to the so-called “people’s police” of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. It is also not possible to determine even approximately the number of missing soldiers.