Russian losses in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale conflict in 2022 exceed 204,000 people, the BBC Russian service wrote, BTA reported.
The list, established by the agency's research with the help of Mediazona and a volunteer command, contains 204,626 names of killed Russian soldiers. Of these, 1,860 were added between March 6 and 20 this year.
More than 35,000 names were added in February, most of which had previously been recorded as "missing without a trace," the British media noted.
37% of the dead were people with civilian jobs who signed contracts with the Russian army after the conflict began.
For several years, we have been keeping records of relatives searching for missing servicemen. Earlier this year, journalists compared these lists with data from government databases — primarily with the list of the register of inheritance cases (the fact that an application for inheritance has been filed confirms the death of the person) and with published court decisions.
The majority of people whose names were added to our list in the last two months died in late 2024 or early 2025. The decrease in the figures in the last parts of the graph is explained not by a decrease in losses, but by a delay associated with the confirmation and analysis of new obituaries. In the case of those declared missing without a trace, this process is further delayed.
Judging by the published court decisions, Russian law enforcement agencies are increasingly persuading people who have been imposed an administrative penalty or are threatened with expulsion from Russia to sign contracts with the army. Hundreds of people on the list signed a contract during the court hearing or immediately after the court decision, even when the violations were administrative, not criminal.
Over 80% of the servicemen who were previously declared missing and whose deaths were confirmed through open sources died in 2024 and 2025. These data correspond to the trend that had already been noted by military experts, the BBC notes: In the first two years of the war, the number of servicemen missing remained relatively small. The significant jump is explained primarily by the change in the nature of military operations, such as the massive use of FPV drones and the expansion of the area of minefields, which significantly complicate the evacuation and search for the bodies of the dead. Sometimes, after artillery shelling or drone attacks, there are practically no remains of a person, and military structures often do not officially recognize the deceased.
An additional factor is the increase in the number of offensive operations by Russian units. After unsuccessful attacks, the military is forced to retreat, without having the opportunity to evacuate the wounded and dead.
The analysis of obituaries also makes it possible to trace the dynamics of losses at different stages of the war. During the first 18 months, losses had a wavy nature with sharp jumps of 100-150 confirmed deaths per day, after which their number dropped to 50-60 people per day.
Since October 2023, the average number of confirmed deaths per day has increased to 120 and has remained steadily high since then.
In terms of the number of confirmed deaths, Bashkortostan and Tatarstan are in the lead. This is partly due to the active work of local volunteers and initiative associations in collecting information.
The share of volunteers, mobilized people and prisoners sent to the front from prisons and colonies already amounts to 57% of all deaths. All of these people had no connection with the armed forces at the time of the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia continues to lose highly qualified personnel at the front, including officers. Since the beginning of the invasion, 7,009 officers have been known to have died, including 494 lieutenant colonels, 164 colonels and 13 generals (including the sentenced to prison, but not deprived of the rank of Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Andrei Golovatsky).
The real losses of the Russian side are higher than those that we manage to establish from open sources. Military experts suggest that the BBC analysis could cover between 45% and 65% of the actual number of dead, due to the fact that a significant part of the bodies of servicemen who died in recent months are probably still on the battlefield.
The total figure increases significantly if we take into account those who participated in the fighting against Ukraine as part of the units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Since December 2022, the DPR has stopped publishing data on its losses, and in the LPR they were not disclosed at all. It is estimated that between 21,000 and 23,500 people had died by the end of September.
Therefore, according to the collected data, the total losses of pro-Russian forces could range from 335,809 to 478,224 servicemen, the BBC concludes.