Russian casualties in Ukraine. Mediazona count, updated

Since our latest update on June 4, 1,058 names have been added to the list of casualties. The bi-weekly total is lower than it was during active fighting for Bakhmut but we are still collating names from that period.

Inmates still represent the largest group in our tally. As yet, there is no clear indication where they will be deployed following Bakhmut; no particular section of the frontlines is showing signs of mass casualties.

News emerged this week that Russia’s Ministry of Defence is urging regional authorities to refrain from publishing obituaries for soldiers killed in Ukraine; later, a confirmation came from the Republic of Khakassia. The motive behind this is apparently to obstruct our work.

While we do utilise official statements from local governmental bodies, they are by no means our sole source of information. Even if we were to exclude them, the overall count would not be significantly affected.

By June 16, we had verified the deaths of 251 Russian officers ranked Lieutenant Colonel or above. A notable increase saw nine deaths in the past fortnight, a figure that reminds of the time when Ukraine received its first HIMARS rocket launchers, enabling them to strike at several Russian army headquarters.

Two officer fatalities occurred on Russian soil in the Belgorod region that was attacked by the Russian Volunteer Corps in early June. They were Colonel Andrey Stesev, leading the Belgorod task force and thus commanding all regional defences, and Colonel Vladimir Kuznetsov, the spouse of Tatyana Vtiusheva, mayor of Istra, a city in the Moscow region. He had been drafted and was in charge of supervising a regiment of mobilised soldiers.

In the last fortnight, we have added one more officer who died in Russia. Nikolay Bykov, from the special forces unit Kmet in the Kursk region, was killed in September 2022, but his rank and service location have only recently been revealed. Bykov’s obituaries said that he was killed by a sabotage group.

Another name on the list is Major General Sergey Goryachev, chief of staff for the 35th Combined Arms Army, tasked with repelling the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. According to his obituaries, he was killed in a missile strike. Goryachev is the fifth Russian general to have been confirmed dead since the start of full-scale war.

Police Colonel Sergey Postovalov was killed in a British Storm Shadow missile strike. Until recently, he was deputy head of police for the Voronezh region, but had been seconded to the occupational authorities of the Kherson region. According to a source from 7×7, a local media, Postovalov was at a sanatorium on the Arabat Spit in the Azov Sea, which had just been visited by Russia’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Denis Manturov. Shortly after the minister departed, the building was hit by missiles.

High-ranking officer deaths identified over four weeks

What we know about the casualties

Most of those killed in action come from the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, Bashkiria, Buryatia, and the Volgograd region. Unusually high number of casualty reports from the Krasnodar region can be attributed to local volunteers’ frequent visits to the cemeteries to photograph new graves, so a greater number of casualties becomes public knowledge.

This is how the casualties are distributed across the Russian regions. These are absolute figures, no adjustments to the population of the region or number of military units station there have been made.

You can choose between the total amount of casualties and a breakdown by army branch, as well as see where the mobilised soldiers who were killed came from.

In the majority of cases, a fallen serviceman’s branch is either listed on the death report, or can be identified from the uniform and insignia on their photos.

Mobilised soldiers, volunteers, and inmates do not have separate branches, but we indicated them separately to allow for comparisons to regular military personnel. Here’s how the deaths are distributed across army branches.

Volunteer units have been sustaining the heaviest casualties since the summer as opposed to death tolls from February and the spring: in the first weeks, the Airborne forces suffered heaviest losses, the Motorised rifle forces followed suit. A large number of those killed in action with no branch identified were volunteer fighters.

Towards the end of 2022 and the beginning of this year, losses among prisoners recruited by the Wagner PMC noticeably increased. These individuals were formed into “assault groups” to attack Ukrainian positions near Bachmut.

In March 2023, inmates became the largest category in our war casualty count.

161 military pilots are known to have been killed. The loss of pilots is particularly painful for the army: it takes 7–8 years to train one first-class frontline pilot, and costs about $3.4 million. The loss of each pilot also means the loss of expensive equipment.

By June 2, we’ve been able to confirm deaths of over 2,150 officers. 251 of them had the rank of a Lieutenant Colonel or higher.

Officers killed in Ukraine

As of today, only two deputy commanders of the armies have been officially confirmed as killed: Major General Andrey Sukhovetsky of the 41st Army, and Major General Vladimir Frolov of the 8th Army. Retired Major General Kanamat Botashev, 63, was killed in late May; former fighter pilot had likely volunteered to rejoin the Armed forces. Another Major General, Roman Kutuzov, was reported dead on June 5; deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Captain 1st Rank Andrey Paliy, is also among the casualties.

In June of 2023, Major General Sergey Goryachev died. He was the chief of staff for the 35th Combined Arms Army, in charge of meeting the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The date of the deaths is provided in over 18,700 reports. The number of casualties per day according to this data is a poor reflection of the real picture, but it does suggest which days saw the most intensive fighting. 

It also has to be mentioned that the latest data is likely incomplete, further updates may introduce significant changes.

Over 20,600 reports mention the age of the dead. In the first six months of the war, when mostly regular military units were fighting, the 21–23-year-old bracket saw the highest number of deaths.

Volunteer and mobilised fighters are considerably older. Generally, men who go to war as volunteers are aged 30–35 and older, and the majority of mobilised soldiers are older than 25.