More and more people are missing. In the first half of 2025, courts received more claims regarding missing military personnel than in the entire last year.

The Ministry of Defense continues to flood courts throughout Russia with claims to declare missing servicemen dead. This is necessary in order to clear the personnel lists for recruiting new fighters.

From January to June 2025, Russian district and garrison military courts received more than 26 thousand claims to declare a person missing or dead. This is more than for the entire 2024 - then there were 22.6 thousand of these claims. This is evidenced by Mediazona’s calculations based on case files on court websites.

Previously, Mediazona already described how in 2024, commanders of military units began en masse to file claims to declare fighters missing and dead in order to free up places on the lists of personnel.

Claims began to be filed en masse starting in the second half of 2024, and in 2025 this process accelerated even more.

As before, courts often hide information on such cases - instead of the names of applicants or third parties, the “Information hidden” mark is indicated on the court’s websites. In total, since the beginning of 2024, 18.9 thousand such statements have already accumulated.

For example, information is hidden in all 2.7 thousand claims that were received in the Oktyabrsky District Court near Rostov over a year and a half - this is the absolute record holder among all Russian courts for missing persons claims. Back in January 2025, the mediazona court press service confirmed that bundles of statements were brought to the judges by representatives of nearby military units.

In 11.8 thousand claims it is directly stated that the commander of a specific military unit is asking to recognize a person as missing or dead. In another 9 thousand cases, some structure of the Ministry of Defense was mentioned.

Thus, almost 23.5 thousand claims are definitely related to dead military personnel. Two-thirds of “hidden” claims in 2024-2025 are also clearly higher than in previous years - this gives another 12-13 thousand “excess” claims that are related to the war.

That is, by mid-2025, from 30 to 40 thousand Russian military personnel have already been asked to be recognized as missing or dead through the courts.

In 2025, the list of divisions that lead in the number of filed claims also changed. In 2024, the most statements were mentioning the 254th and 488th motorized rifle regiments. By mid-2025, the first positions began to be occupied by brigades created on the basis of the DPR armies after annexation - the 1st Slavic Brigade (596 claims) became the leader.

Editor: Maxim Litavrin