Mediazona and Meduza: 47,000 Russian men dead in Ukraine war

Joint research by media outlets Mediazona and Meduza shows that around 47,000 Russian men under 50 have been killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine so far.

“By our calculations, as of late May 2023, roughly 47,000 Russian men under the age of 50 have died in the war. To be absolutely precise, we can assert with a 95% probability that the true number of casualties falls between 40,000 and 55,000,” Mediazona writes.

Helped by excess mortality researcher Dmitry Kobak, journalists studied data from the Register of Inheritance Cases and Rosstat, Russia’s statistics office. Among other things, they compared the number of open inheritance cases with the complete data on mortality in Russia for pre-war years. They then calculated the total excess mortality for men aged 15 to 49.

Meduza and Mediazona also estimated that if one adds those who have been severely injured in combat then the total number of losses could amount to at least 125,000 people.

This calculation includes some missing persons, but does not include prisoners of war or soldiers of the so-called “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Stats project To Be Precise (tochno.st) wrote in late June that the registered deaths from external causes in 2022 — 7,000 people — roughly match the official Russian estimate of war losses. The Ministry of Defence reported last September that 5,937 Russian servicemen were killed in the invasion.

Chechnya, Dagestan, Rostov region, and Buryatia have the highest “external causes” death toll.

The investigative journalism outlet IStories has estimated the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine in 2022 to be at least 18,000.