According to a statistical analysis of Russian soldier deaths, from February 2022 to May 2023, nearly 50,000 Russian men in the Russian military died in the war with Ukraine.

    According to a statistical analysis of the number of Russian soldiers killed in action, nearly 50,000 Russian men died in the war against Ukraine. on March 27, 2022, the body of a Russian soldier who died during a battle with Ukrainian forces in a cornfield in Sitniki, outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev. lay in a cornfield.

Warning: A Russia soldier killed during combats against Ukrainian army lay on a corn field in Sysnyaky, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, March, 26,2022. (AP Photo/ Rodrigo Abd, file)

    

   Two independent Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza, collaborated with the University of Tübingen, Germany, on a study of war fatalities. Using Russian government data, they made a statistical estimate of the number of Russian soldiers killed in the most secretive invasion of Ukraine, conforming to statistical methods for excess mortality prevalent in the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Based on inheritance records and official mortality data, we estimated more deaths than in the normal period for men under about 50 years of age from February 2022 to May 2023.

　Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies have kept military death tolls secret. The number of deaths on the enemy side was amplified and propagated. The Russian military officially acknowledged only the deaths of about 6,000-plus Russian soldiers. Reports of the military death toll were censored and suppressed. Publicizing the death toll was an anti-national act and faced criminal charges.

　MediaZona and Meduza, in cooperation with Russian networks, built a database of war dead using social networking posts and photos from cemeteries across Russia, confirming the deaths of approximately 27,423 Russian soldiers as of July 7, 2023. We estimated the number of war dead that the Russian government persistently concealed. Mediazona and Meduza obtained records of inheritance cases filed with Russian authorities. The national probate registry contained information on more than 11 million deaths from 2014 through May 2023; about 25,000 more inheritance cases for men aged 15-49 occurred in 2022 than expected; by May 27, 2023, the excess number had jumped to about 47,000 cases; and by May 27, 2023, the number of deaths had increased to about 1,000.

　About 20,000 more Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since December 2022, roughly in line with a May assessment by U.S. authorities. The overall number of Russian servicemen killed is lower than the number of American and British intelligence agencies' deaths in the war. The British Defense Ministry estimated in February 2023 that some 40,000 to 60,000 Russians had been killed in action. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that about 35,000 to 43,000 Russians died in the first year of the war. The British Ministry of Defense estimated on July 10 that many casualties (including amputations) by Russian forces averaged about 400 casualties per day over a period of about 17 months.

　Age and sex-specific mortality data for 2022 were obtained from Rosstat, Russia's official statistics agency; 24,000 more men under 50 died in 2022 than expected, consistent with the inheritance data analysis. Missing from the count are Russians who are not officially certified as dead, and Ukrainian citizens fighting in units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Republics. Uncertainty is in the thousands, and the overall results of the estimates are reasonable.

　Asked by the Associated Press on July 10 about the Meduza and Medyazona studies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the number of deaths in the study, privileging only the Russian Defense Ministry. Meduza is an independent Russian media outlet, headquartered in Riga, Latvia, that has been operating in exile for about eight years; in April 2021, Russian authorities designated Meduza as a foreign agent, making advertising revenue difficult; in January 2023, the Russian government expelled Meduza as an illegal organization. Russian authorities blocked the independent media outlet Zona from its website after a full invasion of Ukraine.

   The body of a Russian soldier killed in battle in Sviatohirsk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, was dumped and disemboweled by Russian forces. Ukrainian search parties searched for identities from the dead bodies and remains of Ukrainian and Russian troops.

Warning: The Remains of one of the Russian soldiers killed in battles and abondoned by Russian troops in Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, December 21, 2022. Volunteera of a Ukrainian search GRoup looed for the remains of Ukrainian and Russian servicemen to identified them.(AP photo/ Andrily Andriyenko, Files)