Leaked Russian Records Put Ukraine War Death Toll at At Least 450,000, Analysis Says

Records leaked from Rosstat, Russia's state statistics agency, show that at least 450,000 Russians, most of them soldiers, died in the war in Ukraine up to August this year, according to an analysis of the files. The figure is far beyond anything Moscow has admitted so far.

The records were obtained by two hacking groups, the Belarusian Cyber Partisans and Ukraine's Silent Crow. The two groups said on November 1 that they had broken into Rosstat's network. They published their own analysis of the records and shared the files with several news organisations, though the data has not been independently verified.

Rosstat confirmed it had been hit by cyberattacks between October 29 and November 1, but said it found no evidence that its databases had been compromised or that protected data leaked.

Moscow does not officially publish its military death toll. Deaths can take months, and sometimes years, to be registered in Russia. Investigations by the Financial Times (FT) have concluded that once late paperwork is counted, the toll up to August will settle at about 550,000.

The files list about 410,000 deaths directly as war-related, and 42,000 more fighting-age men whose deaths were confirmed in court because their bodies have never been recovered. The FT identified another 12,000 likely military deaths among men who died at or near the front, bringing the total to at least 450,000.

Among the dead were more than 4,000 foreign citizens believed to have died fighting for Russia, from countries including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Nepal, Colombia and Nigeria. By the FT's count, Uzbekistan had the highest foreign toll at 807, followed by Tajikistan with 598; there were also 44 Nepali dead and 98 Colombians, the highest toll from Latin America.

About 120,000 of those with a recorded location died in the area containing Avdiivka and Pokrovsk, and a further 48,000 in Bakhmut, the FT reported. Avdiivka is a small industrial city in the Donetsk region that Russia took in 2024 after two years of bitter fighting. Bakhmut was the site of the longest and bloodiest infantry battle of the war before falling to Russian and Wagner Group forces in May 2023.

The age profile has shifted over time. The average age of those killed rose from 34 in the first year of the war to 40 in 2025, and men aged 35 to 44 made up the largest group, with 158,000 dead, the FT reported.

The burden has also fallen unevenly by region. Zabaykalsky Krai, home to a large community of Buryats, an Indigenous Mongolic people of southern Siberia, recorded about 12,300 deaths, roughly one for every 80 people in the region. Bashkortostan recorded 15,800 deaths.

Janis Kluge, an expert on Russia at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, wrote on X that there is no longer any doubt the leaked Rosstat database is authentic, because any famous person who has died in recent years can be found in it. He added, however, that the trickier question is whether the data was manipulated to increase the war death toll, while noting that such manipulation would be unbelievably difficult, making that conspiracy theory highly unlikely.

Bloomberg News, using a wider definition that includes people born outside Russia, counted 11,335 foreign dead, with foreign deaths rising from about 630 in 2022 to more than 5,500 in 2025. An Amnesty International report in September found that people from Brazil, Colombia, Sri Lanka and South Africa had been promised well-paid civilian jobs and then forced into the army on arrival in Russia. Moscow denies coercing anyone to fight in Ukraine.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, analysed the leaked data and said the figures likely understate Russia's true losses because of reporting limitations. It added that, as of July, Russia's casualties are now outpacing its recruitment. Kluge told The Moscow Times that the deaths represent about half a per cent of Russia's working-age population, which may have little economic impact, so the main significance is political; in his words, you cannot say Russia is winning this war if it is losing population at this rate.