A joint investigation by the BBC, "Mediazona" and a network of volunteers using open data has identified the names of 155,368 Russian servicemen who died during the full-scale war against Ukraine. The data shows a significant change in the structure of the dead: a third of them are now volunteers who signed a contract after February 2022, while a year earlier this group represented about 15%. The average age of the dead was 38, and almost half of the volunteers were men between 45 and 55 who had worked in civilian jobs before the war.
One of the most telling cases is that of 53-year-old Alexander Grunin from Pavlovsky Posad, who signed a contract after years of financial difficulties. He received the promised bonuses, but just two months after being sent to the front, he was wounded three times and yet was not taken out for treatment because "there was no one to fight," as his daughter put it. Grunin died less than three months after signing the contract.
The investigation notes that new volunteers often receive minimal training, sometimes only a few days of training, before being assigned to assault units that suffer the heaviest losses. This leads to a constant shortage of people for rotation and to practices of refusing hospitalization despite injuries, with soldiers returning to the ranks without treatment. This trend is also acknowledged by pro-government military bloggers, and British military intelligence reports that in some armies entire assault groups have been formed from only wounded soldiers.
The steady increase in the number of dead volunteers is explained by the fact that they are the ones being sent to the most difficult sections of the front, mainly in the Donetsk region. The authorities in Russia are maintaining intensive campaigns to recruit new fighters, using various forms of pressure and agitation, including meetings with people in debt, activity in universities and mobilization among residents of small towns where there are no alternatives for well-paid work. Some recruits mistakenly believe that they are signing a contract for only one year, but from September 2022 all contracts are automatically extended until the end of the war. In addition, thousands of defendants in criminal cases are signing contracts with the army, as the law allows them to avoid criminal prosecution if they go to the front.
The investigation also takes into account other trends. A significant proportion of the dead were sent from colonies and pre-trial detention centers, accounting for about 13% of confirmed casualties. Another 11% were mobilized in the fall of 2022. Russia also continues to lose highly qualified command personnel: 6,205 officers have been identified as dead, including 450 lieutenant colonels, 152 colonels, and 12 generals.
The real death toll is likely significantly higher, as open source data only covers between 45% and 65% of actual casualties. This would mean that the number of Russian servicemen killed could be between 239,000 and 345,260. If we include the losses in the ranks of the militias of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR, which are estimated to be another 21,000-23,500 dead, the total number of irreversible losses of the pro-Russian forces could range from 260,000 to almost 370,000 people.