More than 46,500 Russian soldiers were killed in Ukraine

The BBC Russian Service in collaboration with the investigative journalism website Mediazona and a group of volunteers have identified the names of 46,678 Russian servicemen who have been killed in Ukraine since February 2022.

These are names that have been identified from open sources. The real number may be much higher, the BBC’s Russian service reports.

In the two weeks since the last tally of Russian casualties was published, a further 1,555 soldiers have been confirmed dead, the highest number since the start of the war.

The BBC and the Mediazona website point out that notifications of servicemen’s deaths are often delayed in reaching their relatives. For this reason the increase in casualties in this two-week period may be a consequence of the Avdiivka attack. However, identifications are being made of later casualties related to attempted attacks by the Russian military in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

The biggest casualties during this period are volunteers sent to the front (an additional 382 identified deaths in two weeks), conscripts (an additional 219 deaths) and inmates of correctional institutions (an additional 191), the BBC points out.

The total number of casualties increases substantially if those who fought against Ukraine through the lines of the “people’s police” of the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk are included in the list.

The calculations carried out by the journalists of these media are based on open sources, statements from local administrations, mass media and relatives of the soldiers killed, as well as information from the cemeteries. In their estimation, the actual number of casualties is twice as high.

Recently the head of the CIA William Burns had stated that since the beginning of the war the losses in Russian military killed or wounded reached 315,000. BBC and Mediazona journalists consider Burns’ estimate to be close to reality.

Moscow and Kiev do not disclose losses in the war in Ukraine, talking only about the losses of the opponent. Warring parties in war conflicts tend to exaggerate their successes and downplay their failures. The BBC and Mediazona survey is one of the most important independent estimates of the number of casualties.