Russia’s statistical service has recorded the deaths of 11,335 foreigners whom the Russian authorities recruited to take part in the war against Ukraine through coercion, deception or payment. These are people who were born outside the Russian Federation or did not hold Russian citizenship, Bloomberg reported. The data comes from Rosstat’s databases, which record information on the deaths of more than 11 million people, along with additional details about their citizenship, place of birth and the circumstances in which they died. Access to this database was obtained by the Belarusian hackers “CyberPartisans” and the Ukrainian hacking group Silent Crow, who passed the materials on to journalists.
The fact that these foreigners died in the war against Ukraine is clear from the wording, which contains references such as “special military operation” and “drone attack”, as well as various special codes. The data also covers the period from February 24, 2022 (that is, from the beginning of Russia’s aggression) to the end of August 2026.
Where the mercenaries came from
A significant proportion of the mercenaries came from former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian countries, whose nationals are also the ones most frequently killed at the front. Another 3,700 of those killed held Ukrainian citizenship because they had been born in Ukraine after it declared independence.
Address registrations show that the majority of the Ukrainian citizens killed had lived in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, which are currently under Russian occupation. Since the beginning of Russia’s war, the authorities have often forcibly conscripted men from the self-proclaimed “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics” into the army. Forced mobilization also affected numerous migrants from Central Asia who subsequently obtained Russian passports. They were recruited into the army from the Russian cities where they lived.