15 generals. Russia‘s highest‑ranking officers’ toll in the Ukraine war

On March 31, an An-26 military transport aircraft came down during a routine flight over occupied Crimea, killing all 29 people on board: six crew and 23 passengers. The Russian Ministry of Defence attributed the crash to a technical fault and said nothing further about who had been on the plane.

Sources told the BBC Russian Service that one of those passengers was Lieutenant General Alexander Otroshhenko. An anonymous Northern Fleet serviceman confirmed he had been on board, and a Severomorsk resident whose relative, a major, also died in the crash confirmed his death independently. The Ministry of Defence made no mention of him.

Otroshchenko had commanded the Northern Fleet’s composite aviation corps since 2024, a posting that came after years leading the fleet’s naval aviation and the 45th Army of the Air Force and Air Defence. Earlier in his career, between 2010 and 2013, he commanded the Black Sea Fleet’s naval aviation. He was promoted to Lieutenant General in 2019, and his service record included the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s military intervention in Syria.

Russia’s toll of fallen generals

His death brings to 15 the number of Russian generals confirmed killed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, according our own independent count with the BBC Russian Service: five Lieutenant Generals, seven Major Generals, and three former generals. Overall, we have verified the deaths of 6,948 officers across the Russian army and other security agencies by March 27.

The Lieutenant Generals died in a variety of circumstances spread across three years of war. Oleg Tsokov, deputy commander of the Southern Military District, was killed by a Storm Shadow missile strike in July 2023. Igor Kirillov, head of the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, was assassinated with a bomb in Moscow in December 2024. Yaroslav Moskalik, a senior officer in the General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, died in a car bombing in a Moscow suburb in April 2025.

Among the Major Generals, the losses began in the opening weeks of the invasion. Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Army, and Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Army, were both killed in early 2022. Roman Kutuzov died in June of that year in an attack on a troop formation.

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 Zaporizhzhia. Vladimir Zavadsky, deputy commander of the 14th Army Corps, was killed near Krynky in November 2023. Pavel Klimenko, commander of the 5th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade (formerly the “Oplot” Brigade of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic) was fatally wounded by an FPV drone in November 2024. 

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

The two retired generals round out the list. Kanamat Botashev had previously been dismissed from service for crashing a fighter jet; he was fighting for the Wagner PMC when his Su-25 was shot down in May 2022. Andrei Golovatsky, a former Interior Ministry general who was serving an 8.5-year prison sentence at the time, was killed in June 2024. Sergei Dubinsky, a former Investigative Committee general, was convicted of bribery in 2023, stripped of his rank, and subsequently signed up for military service; he was killed in Ukraine in 2024.