The BBC Russian service and the Russian site Mediazona indicated on Wednesday that they had identified more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Their count, published in a joint investigation and stopped on 7 April 2024, comes from the exploitation of certain information, such as official press releases, information published in the media and social networks, or collected by going to observe the graves in cemeteries.
At the end of February, Kyiv estimated the number of soldiers killed at 31,000, while the Russian army has only communicated its military losses on very rare occasions, and these figures are considered to be largely minimized. The New York Times, citing American officials, estimated Russian military losses at 120,000. On January 29, in a written response to a parliamentarian, British Defense Minister James Heappey estimated Russian losses at more than 350,000 dead and wounded. According to the two media's examination of a sample of more than 1,000 prisoners, half of those conscripted directly by the Russian Army had died within two months of being sent to the front.