Russian losses in the war with Ukraine.
Mediazona count, updated

For this update, we added slightly fewer records to our named list of losses than was typical earlier in 2026. Given the level of attention the project now attracts, we continue to receive a great deal of feedback: corrections and additions to existing records, error reports and so on.

We also employed a new method for detecting errors in the database: we performed a vector search on photographs, which allowed us to identify several dozen complex duplicates, as well as dozens of cases of erroneous photo attribution. This occurs when several people are mentioned in an obituary and the accompanying photograph is posted without a caption indicating whom it depicts—the same image can end up attached to multiple records, even where the record itself is not a duplicate.

Our colleagues from the Dossier investigative project shared with us a list of servicemen from the 27th Motorised Rifle Division. It includes data on thousands of personnel killed in action, missing in action, wounded, as well as deserters and soldiers captured by Ukraine. We have only just begun working with this dataset and have not yet incorporated information from it into our list. The 27th Division files, like all similar documents, require additional verification: some of the dead are already accounted for in our records, while others need to be confirmed through state registries. We will dedicate one of our future updates to this unit.

Last week, something extraordinary happened: for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, a major pro-war channel cited figures from our count. Although we were not credited as a source—only the number was mentioned—this is an important development, as supporters of the war have never before publicly acknowledged the total number of losses.

The Telegram channel “Novorossiya militia reports Z.O.V.” wrote: “Consider this: today, a list naming more than 200,000 dead Russian servicemen is publicly known. And Madyar’s channel alone publishes videos several times a week of Russian soldiers killed by FPV drones. Each video shows between 50 and 100 dead. His channel publishes several such videos a week. There are dozens of similar channels, run by various units of the Ukrainian armed forces’ unmanned systems. The current military operations are reminiscent of the slaughter of cattle in Siberia, only with people instead of cows. There is a growing sense that with the current government incapable of adapting to the realities of war, Russia will never achieve victory.

Previously, pro-war channels would discuss losses only on specific sections of the front, the cruelty of individual commanders, the failures of certain unnamed “generals”, and broader complaints about technological shortcomings and indifference to soldiers’ lives.

A succession of blows has produced this prolonged depression among pro-war milbloggers. One of the most prominent factors is the recent disconnection of Starlink for Russian units, with no alternative offered by the authorities, compounded almost immediately by Roskomnadzor’s move to block Telegram, the platform on which the entire pro-war ecosystem lives: its fundraising, its coordination, its information channels. Few believe that Max, the government-approved messenger being pushed as a replacement, will permit even a fraction of what Telegram allowed.

Meanwhile, 2026 has brought no military gains of any significance. The last notable advances—the capture of Pokrovsk and Huliaipole—came in 2025. The Ministry of Defence continues to report victories, including the supposed seizure of Kupiansk, which all informed observers know to be fiction. As Defence Minister Belousov himself once declared: “You can make mistakes, but you must not lie.”

What shook the pro-war community most acutely in recent weeks was the death of Vladimir Laktyushin, a 38-year-old aspiring politician from Ramenskoye in the Moscow region. He signed a military contract and was dead within ten day, killed during training at a range still within reach of Ukrainian strikes. The milblogger Alexei Zhivov wrote: “I wonder how many more guys have to die before these fucking training grounds are moved out of the range of weapons the enemy commonly has at its disposal? How many years does it take—five, ten, twenty-five?!” Another milblogger, Vladimir Romanov, recalled his own earlier estimate: the average lifecycle of an assault trooper is twelve days. Day one, he signs the contract. Days two to eleven, rudimentary training. Day twelve, deployment in active frontline sectors, one in two does not make it to his position alive.

What we know about losses

The map below shows the distribution of casualties across Russia’s regions. These are absolute figures and have not been adjusted for population or number of military units.

You can filter the map to show total losses, losses by branch of service, or the home regions of mobilised soldiers who were killed.

In most cases, official reports or visual cues like uniforms and insignia allow us to determine a soldier’s branch of service, or how he came to be in the army (mobilised, volunteer, prisoner, etc.).

The chart below compares these different groups of servicemen.

From early summer and into the mid-fall season of 2022, volunteers bore the brunt of the losses, which is strikingly different from the situation in the initial stage of the war: in winter and early spring, the Airborne Forces suffered the greatest damage, followed by the Motorised Rifle troops.

By the end of 2022 and the beginning of the next year, losses among prisoners recruited into the Wagner PMC increased markedly. They were formed into “assault groups” to overwhelm Ukrainian positions near Bakhmut.

By March 2023, prisoners became the largest category of war losses. After the capture of Bakhmut, there have been no cases of mass use of prisoners so far.

By September 2024, volunteers once again emerged as the largest category among the KIA. This shift reflects a cumulative effect: prison recruitment had significantly waned, no new mobilisation had been announced, yet the stream of volunteers continued unabated.

By March 27, 2026, the death of 6,948 officers of the Russian army and other security agencies had been confirmed.

The proportion of officer deaths among overall casualties has steadily declined since the conflict began. In the early stages, when professional contract soldiers formed the main invasion force, officers accounted for up to 10% of fatalities. By November 2024, this figure had dropped to between 2–3%—a shift that reflects both evolving combat tactics and the intensive recruitment of volunteer infantry, who suffer casualty rates many times higher than their commanding officers.

Officers killed in Ukraine

To date, the deaths of 12 Russian generals have been officially confirmed: three Lieutenant Generals, seven Major Generals, and two who had retired from active service.

Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, deputy commander of the Southern Military District, was killed in July 2023. In December 2024, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical (NBC) Protection Troops, was killed by a bomb in Moscow. Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, a senior officer in the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, was killed by a car bomb in a Moscow suburb in April 2025.

Two deputy army commanders, Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky (41st Army) and Major General Vladimir Frolov (8th Army), were killed in the first weeks of the war. In June 2022, Major General Roman Kutuzov was killed in an attack on a troop formation.

Major General Sergei Goryachev, chief of staff of the 35th Combined Arms Army, was killed in June 2023 while commanding forces against the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia region. In November 2023, Major General Vladimir Zavadsky, deputy commander of the 14th Army Corps, was killed near the village of Krynky.

In November 2024, Major General Pavel Klimenko, commander of the 5th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade (formerly the “Oplot” Brigade of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic), was fatally wounded by an FPV drone.

In July 2025, a strike on the headquarters of the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade killed at least six officers, including the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Mikhail Gudkov.

The two retired generals on the list are Kanamat Botashev, a pilot who had been dismissed for crashing a fighter jet and was fighting for Wagner PMC when his Su-25 was shot down in May 2022, and Andrei Golovatsky, a former Interior Ministry general serving an 8.5-year prison sentence who was killed in June 2024.

The date of death is known in 187,000 cases. While this data does not capture the full daily reality of the war, it does suggest which periods saw the most intense fighting.

Please note that the data of the last few weeks is the most incomplete and may change significantly in the future.

The age of the deceased is mentioned in 189,500 reports. For the first six months of the war, when the fighting was done by the regular army, the 21-23 age group accounted for the most deaths.

Volunteers and mobilised men are significantly older: people voluntarily go to war over 30, and the mobilised are generally over 25.