Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to give a realistic figure for the number of compatriots killed during his faltering war in Ukraine. However, soldiers who die often leave behind two valuable things: souvenirs and money. An investigation published on July 10 by Meduza and Mediazona, two independent Russian media outlets, has been based on them to offer a new estimate of the number of Russian soldiers killed. The investigation has scoured the obituaries published in the local media and social networks and has analyzed the official records on inheritances.
These records help reveal to some extent the number of deaths. However, not all soldiers who die in Ukraine have valuable property or assets, or someone to leave them to. For this reason, the estimate is calculated by crossing these cases with some 27,000 obituaries verified by Mediazona and the Russian service of the BBC.
Based on this data crossing, Meduza and Mediazona have made an estimate of the number of Russian soldiers killed for each one that leaves behind an official record of inheritance. They then calculated the excess bequests left behind by men since February 2022 compared to historical trends. Combining these approximations offers a final estimate of the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine: between 40,000 and 55,000 as of May 27.
This is a lower figure than other estimates. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, has estimated between 60,000 and 70,000 deaths in the first year of the invasion alone. However, the estimates coincide with the deaths recorded by Rosstat, the Russian statistical agency, and the excess deaths they assume for last year (according to calculations by Dmitri Kobak, a researcher based in Germany). Although that data ends in 2022, the totals for that year are similar even when broken down by age group, as our chart shows.
According to analysts, for every person killed there are three or more wounded enough to be out of action. By that logic, 200,000 Russian soldiers would have been killed or wounded in Ukraine. As that number grows, Putin will need more men to fight his neighbors, and that may become increasingly difficult for him.
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
