Russian servicemen killed in Ukraine have exceeded 33,000, according to calculations made by the BBC Russian service and the Mediazona website, drawing their figures from open sources. Both media point out that the actual number of such losses may be one and a half or two times higher.

The BBC in collaboration with the website Mediazona (identified as a “foreign agent” in Russia) and a group of volunteers managed to identify the names of 33,236 Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine since February 2022. This number includes at least 2,448 people who were killed while repelling the counterattack of the Ukrainian armed forces.

In the first weeks of the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June 2023, there was a significant increase in casualties among Russian officers, especially senior officers. This trend continued.

Since the start of the counteroffensive, Russia has lost at least 234 officers, including 2 generals and 11 colonels (this number does not include the 13 military pilots killed during the conflict between the Russian army and the Wagner mercenaries on Russian soil in late June ).

The last time senior Russian military officers suffered such significant casualties was only in the first months of the invasion of Ukraine.

The mounting casualties among commanders show that the Russian military still requires “manual control” and the personal presence of senior officers at or near the front line.

Judging by the obituaries, the brunt of the counterattack by the Ukrainian armed forces was shouldered, as is customary in the last 12 months of the war, by units of conscripted and volunteer soldiers.

One in three killed during the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a conscripted soldier (681 of the 2,448 identified dead).

Prisoners conscripted to the front also continued to play an important role.

The total number of Russians killed and identified (33,236) includes Wagner’s mercenaries, but does not include those who fought on the Russian side as members of units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics.

The Russian service of the BBC writes that taking into account this reality in the self-proclaimed republics, the total losses of the forces fighting on the side of Russia in Ukraine could exceed 86,000 dead.

The Russian Ministry of Defense last announced a total number of casualties on September 21, 2022, reporting at the time that 5,937 Russian servicemen had been killed. It was then reported three more times, confirming the loss of another 162 people.

In June of this year it became known that the Ministry of Defense asked the authorities of some regions, such as Buryatia, Tuva and Khakassia where the losses are particularly high, not to publish the obituaries of the soldiers who have been killed.

The losses in the elite forces are significant, according to the recording of the media in question:

65 men of the FSB and FSO security services

186 air force pilots

347 men of the special forces of military espionage

502 men of the special units of the National Guard

781 marines

2,019 men of the airborne brigades