At least around 220,000 Russian military personnel have been killed in the war against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, according to calculations by Mediazona and the BBC, which, together with a team of volunteers, maintain a named list of Russian soldiers killed in action.
Source: Mediazona, a Russian media outlet
Details: This list only includes those who could be identified, for instance via the Registry of Inheritance Cases.
"According to these calculations, by August 2025, around 220,000 men aged 18 to 55 have been killed in the war.
During our work with the Registry of Inheritance Cases, we recorded a new peak in male mortality in November 2024 – about 3,000 people per week," writes Mediazona.
Graph: Mediazona
According to the outlet, from the second half of 2024, Russian courts began receiving mass claims to declare servicemen as missing or dead.
Most often, these claims are filed by the Ministry of Defence, as they need to remove a missing (effectively deceased) soldier from personnel lists.
“Before the second half of 2024, such claims were almost non-existent in courts – meaning a significant portion of the missing personnel (aside from those whose bodies were exchanged) was not accounted for, as they didn’t appear in obituaries or the Registry of Inheritance Cases. Formally, these people were not considered dead at all,” notes Mediazona.
Graph: Mediazona
By early August, there were around 50,000 such court filings related to military personnel. Reports indicate that currently courts are declaring more than 250 people as missing or dead daily, comparable to daily fatalities at the front.
“The process of officially recognising previously missing soldiers as dead is clearly visible in the Registry of Inheritance Cases – the missing appeared here, as in courts, in 2024 (not at the start of the war)… By the end of 2024, the number of male inheritance cases where 100 days to a year had passed between death and registration exceeded the benchmark of peaceful 2021 by 50 times,” writes Mediazona.
The outlet suggests that the majority of those officially declared dead through the courts will be reflected in future estimates as the picture for 2025 becomes clearer.
By 28 August, media and volunteers had confirmed the deaths of over 5,500 Russian officers and other military personnel.
In addition, the deaths of 12 Russian generals have been officially confirmed: three lieutenant generals, seven major generals, and two retired generals.
Background:
In May, Russian media reported identifying over 110,000 Russians who had been killed in the war against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. They noted that the likelihood of dying in the war for men from Tuva or Altai is 30-40 times higher than for Moscow residents.According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, from 24 February 2022 to 29 August 2025, Ukraine’s defence forces have killed and wounded around 1,080,480 Russian soldiers.
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