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BBC and Mediazona researchers put Russian death toll in Ukraine at over 90,000

People walk past the exhibition ‘Together to Victory’ of military posters created by artists and dedicated to Russian soldiers in the centre of city, seasonally decorated ahead of the upcoming New Year and Christmas celebrations in St. Petersburg, Russia, 14 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANATOLY MALTSEV

People walk past the exhibition ‘Together to Victory’ of military posters created by artists and dedicated to Russian soldiers in the centre of city, seasonally decorated ahead of the upcoming New Year and Christmas celebrations in St. Petersburg, Russia, 14 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/ANATOLY MALTSEV

Researchers using open source intelligence have confirmed the deaths of over 90,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, BBC News Russian reported on Friday.

Working with Russian independent news outlet Mediazona, BBC News Russian said that it had identified a total of 90,019 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, 23% of whom it said had enlisted to serve in the Russian military since the beginning of the war.

Using open source intelligence in an attempt to ascertain the death toll in Ukraine has been necessary since the Russian authorities stopped publishing official numbers of the dead and wounded shortly after the start of the war. In the last official figures issued in September 2022, then-Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu put the death toll at 5,937.

Over half of the dead soldiers identified by researchers had not served in either the army or the National Guard prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the BBC added, while 17% of those who died had been released from prison sentences in exchange for enlisting for fight.

The real death toll is likely to be much higher than the confirmed figures, however, with experts interviewed by the BBC suggesting that only between 45–65% of all Russian deaths in Ukraine had been accounted for researchers, who rely on open source intelligence such as social media posts, obituaries published in the Russian press and new gravestones in cemeteries to make their calculations.

As such, the true number of Russian troops killed in the war could now be as high as 200,000 people, or, if the count includes troops from the Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, up to 223,500.

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