Big rise in death toll of Russian soldiers

More than 66,000 Russian military personnel have died during the war in Ukraine, ­ according to independent Russian media outlet Mediazona.

Ukrainian emergency workers inspect a heavily damaged residential building following a recent missile attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Saturday. Picture: AFP

More than 66,000 Russian military personnel have died during the war in Ukraine, ­ according to independent Russian media outlet Mediazona.

The list has risen by more than 4600 in the past four weeks, it said, while stressing this was not a definitive figure since many soldiers’ deaths are not made public.

Mediazona has been drawing up a list of known soldier deaths in conjunction with the BBC ­Russian Service using open-source data.

In April, it had announced it had found more than 50,000 names of Russians killed.

Mediazona journalist Anastasia Alekseyeva stressed that the latest death numbers were “not linked to Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region or Russia’s ­advance in the east”. This is ­because researchers are still working through a backlog of death reports.

The report found that 172 conscripts doing national service have been killed, with the highest figures in early months.

However, these figures may be inexact since conscripts can sign professional army contracts and some may have done so without telling relatives.

According to Mediazona’s breakdown, the region with the largest absolute number of deaths – 2578 – is the southern republic of Bashkortostan, which has a large Muslim population.

The most represented age group overall was 33-35 (6877 deaths). More than 12,000 of the dead were prisoners, after Russia sought to recruit inmates by promising them freedom after a period on the frontline.

But numbers have dropped recently, Alekseyeva said: “evidently the recruitment drive is not as active”.

Mediazona and the BBC along with volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022, using open-source information from official reports and the media, as well as using satellite images of Russian cemeteries to estimate the number of new graves.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June that almost 700,0000 Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine.

Moscow rarely talks about the losses it has sustained in what it calls a “special military operation”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in February that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the first two years of the war.

On Sunday, Moscow said it had thwarted a “massive” drone attack on western Russia and ­another targeting the capital.

At least 26 drones were “identified and destroyed” by the Russian military, without causing any casualties or damage, Bryansk ­regional Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said on Telegram.

Russia’s neighbouring Kursk has been hit by a Ukrainian ­offensive since August 6.

Overnight into Sunday, five drones launched towards the capital were neutralised by Russian forces, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

The incursion came more than a week after Sobyanin described “one of the largest ever” drone ­attacks against Moscow, with authorities saying 11 aircraft were destroyed.

Russian forces also shot down drones overnight above the border regions of Belgorod and ­Voronezh, as well as in Lipetsk and Ryazan regions farther from Ukraine, without local officials providing precise numbers.

“The glass of three residential buildings in Belgorod is damaged. In one private residence, a utility building was completely destroyed,” Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

AFP