Leaked Russian Records Reveal Nearly 400,000 War Dead in Ukraine — the Toll Moscow Never Admitted

Russia has recorded the deaths of about 400,000 of its own people fighting in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, according to confidential data from the country’s own statistics agency.

The figures come from more than 11 million death certificates held by Rosstat, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service. Between 24 February 2022 and late August 2026, almost 392,700 of those certificates explicitly linked the deaths to the war. A broader count by one of the hacker groups behind the leak puts the total as high as 450,000.

It is the clearest picture yet of what the war has cost Russia — a toll the Kremlin has spent nearly five years trying to keep secret.

What the leaked records show

The data was obtained by two hacker groups: Cyber Partisans, a Belarusian pro-opposition group, and Silent Crow, a Ukrainian hacking operation. They shared the records with Bloomberg News and a small group of other media outlets, and published their findings on 7 November. Bloomberg published its investigation on 8 November.

The two groups reached slightly different totals because they counted in different ways:

• Cyber Partisans counted at least 393,881 deaths in records that explicitly attributed the fatality to military operations.
• Silent Crow estimated the toll at as many as 450,100, using a broader method that also included non-combat deaths among military personnel and cases where the cause of death was not specified.
• The figure shared with Bloomberg was nearly 392,700 death certificates that explicitly linked the fatalities to the war, either through cause-of-death coding or through free-text fields mentioning terms such as “military operation”, “shelling” or “drones”.

Each certificate carries details such as the dead person’s age, place of residence and where they died. Together, they form the most detailed record yet of Russia’s losses — drawn not from an enemy government or an outside estimate, but from Moscow’s own paperwork.

How the hackers got the data

Silent Crow and Cyber Partisans said on 1 November that they had breached Rosstat’s internal infrastructure, gaining access to about 25,000 computers and extracting some 23 terabytes of data, including information on Russian military losses.

The groups said they had been inside Rosstat’s network for around six months before the operation became public, collecting internal documents before targeting the agency’s IT infrastructure overnight between 31 October and 1 November.

Rosstat said days later that it had detected targeted cyberattacks on its systems between 29 October and 1 November, but that it had found no evidence its databases had been compromised or that confidential information had leaked. The agency said it was restoring systems after an attack knocked parts of its infrastructure offline, and it later extended deadlines for submitting certain statistical data. It did not respond to a request for comment on the leaked figures.

Why the real number is probably higher

The figure of nearly 400,000 is almost certainly an undercount, according to Bloomberg’s reporting.

Some soldiers are listed as missing, and their deaths have never been confirmed. Some bodies have never been identified. Others died months after being wounded, with the cause of death recorded in a way that does not mention the war at all. Other deaths may be recorded under unrelated categories — or not recorded at all.

There is also a growing problem with delays. Since the war started, military deaths are taking longer and longer to be formally registered. The median time between a death and its registration was about six weeks in the second half of 2023. By 2025, it had stretched to more than four months.

The scale of the backlog is striking. In August 2026 alone, more than 2,500 war-related deaths appeared in the database even though they had occurred in 2025. In 2024, the last year with substantially complete data, about one in 10 war-related deaths was recorded more than 14 months after it happened, while most non-military deaths were registered within a week.

From mid-2024, the records also became patchier. Nearly half of war deaths in that period were missing a home region, compared with about one in 20 for other deaths.

People familiar with the situation in the Russian military, speaking to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media, said an estimate of about 400,000 Russian war deaths was realistic.

Who is dying: older men and poorer regions

The records show how the war’s burden has shifted over time — and who is carrying it.

In the first half of 2022, only 146 men between the ages of 50 and 59 died of war-related causes — less than 1% of all deaths for that age group. By the first six months of 2025, that number had risen to more than 12,600, making up more than 16% of deaths for Russian men in that age bracket.

For men aged 18 to 29, the war was responsible for about two-thirds of all deaths in the same period.

In simple terms, the relatively young army that invaded Ukraine in 2022 has come to draw on older and older sections of Russian society. And the burden has not fallen evenly across the country.

In remote Siberian regions such as Buryatia, Tuva and Zabaykalsky Krai, which all border Mongolia, about one-third of men aged 18 to 49 who died between the start of the invasion and mid-2024 were recorded as war-related. In Moscow and St Petersburg, it was about one in 10.

Poorer, more remote and ethnically diverse regions have borne a heavier share of the deaths, while people in the big cities have been shielded to an extent.

The toll keeps growing in 2026

So far in 2026, nearly 37,800 military deaths have been recorded in the leaked data — but that is almost certainly an underestimate, given the months-long lag before deaths are registered.

Separate reporting suggests the fighting has been even tougher for Russian forces in 2026, with fewer territorial advances than in 2025 and rising casualties. The Kremlin lost a record 54,000 troops in October — either killed or seriously wounded — according to Ukraine and Western intelligence agencies.

With no significant gains on the battlefield in 2026, Russia has shifted tactics to heavily bombing Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, with the aim of breaking Kyiv’s morale. At the same time, the Kremlin has been trying to persuade the United States to force Ukraine to give up more territory to end the war.

The human cost can also be measured against what Russia has gained. Estimates based on data from Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState indicate that Moscow has gained control of approximately 73,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory since the invasion began in February 2022. Using Silent Crow’s upper estimate of 450,100 deaths, that would mean roughly six deaths for every square kilometre captured.

What Moscow says — and what it hides

President Vladimir Putin has gone to great lengths to avoid acknowledging the scale of Russian fatalities in Ukraine. As far back as 2015, he made military losses incurred “in peacetime during special operations” or during war a state secret. Russia has not provided any casualty figures since the early months of the invasion.

Rosstat, meanwhile, gradually stopped publishing many statistics after the 2022 invasion, which is why the leaked database offers such a rare window into the war’s true cost for Russia.

Bloomberg said it was not possible to independently and cryptographically prove the authenticity of the database. But its review found that the metadata was consistent with a genuine data export, and it found no indicators of fabrication. The leak was also consistent with previously published official government death data from 2021 to 2023, the last year Rosstat published final annual statistics. Bloomberg found only a 0.1% and 0.2% difference between total death figures in the leaked database and Rosstat’s official figures for 2021 and 2022. The biggest difference was in 2023, when the number of deaths in the leaked files was about 1% higher than the number reported by Rosstat.

How the figures compare with other counts

The leaked records do not stand alone. Independent efforts to count Russia’s dead have been pointing in the same direction for some time:

• Mediazona and BBC Russian, working with volunteers, had identified 285,881 deaths by name as of November. They have cautioned that their verified count is incomplete and that the actual number is likely to be substantially higher.
• A separate estimate by Mediazona and Meduza, based on Russia’s probate registry, puts the death figure at about 352,000 through December 2025. That registry excludes combatants from occupied Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s General Staff says Russia has suffered 1.6 million deaths and serious injuries since the beginning of the war — a far higher figure, but one that includes the wounded as well as the dead.
• The Economist’s statistical model, updated on 31 October, put Russian deaths at 374,000 to 770,000 — the leaked records’ figure of nearly 400,000 sits at the bottom of that range.

On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky told French media in February that at least 55,000 of his soldiers had been killed in the war, and that a large number of people were missing.

The Kyiv Independent said it could not immediately independently verify the authenticity of the leaked records or the casualty estimates. That caution is important: the database has not been independently verified, and the figures should be treated as the best available evidence, not as a final official count.

The recruitment problem behind the numbers

The death toll also helps explain a growing problem for the Kremlin: finding enough soldiers.

With monthly losses often exceeding recruitment levels, and Russian troops not advancing on the ground, Moscow may soon have to mobilise more aggressively. The Kremlin has built digital infrastructure to summon people to the army and has closed off potential escape routes for those who do not want to fight.

The 2022 decree on partial mobilisation has never been formally revoked, which means the authorities could still call up more reservists without announcing a new mobilisation. Russia has introduced sign-up bonuses and other benefits to encourage people to join the military, although some payments are being cut because of growing pressure on the country’s finances.

Why this matters now

The leak has emerged just as another round of negotiations is about to begin. Officials from Russia, Ukraine and the United States are due to meet in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday 10 November to discuss the parameters of a potential ceasefire. It would be the fourth round of talks brokered by the Trump administration, following the previous meeting in Geneva in February. European representatives are also expected to join.

Western governments backing the diplomatic effort are looking for a way to break the deadlock, but disagreements over territorial control and security arrangements remain unresolved.

For nearly five years, the true scale of Russia’s losses has been one of the war’s biggest unknowns — hidden behind a state secret, missing from official statistics, and argued over in competing estimates. These leaked records do not settle the question. But they bring the world closer to an answer than it has ever been, and the answer is far worse than Moscow has ever admitted.

What happens next

The Abu Dhabi talks on Tuesday will test whether the two sides can agree even on the shape of a ceasefire. Ukraine wants NATO-like security guarantees and rejects territorial concessions. Russia demands Ukrainian withdrawal from four regions it claims, military restrictions and a permanent exclusion from NATO.

The leaked death toll is unlikely to change either side’s negotiating position on its own. But it changes the public picture of the war: the cost, in Russian lives, is now documented in Moscow’s own records — and it is roughly 400,000 dead, and probably more.

Whether the Kremlin acknowledges that figure is another matter. It has not done so for nearly five years. Nothing in its response to the leak suggests it will start now.

Frequently asked questions

How many Russians have died in the Ukraine war?

According to confidential Rosstat death records obtained by hackers and reviewed by Bloomberg, nearly 392,700 deaths between February 2022 and late August 2026 were explicitly linked to the war. A broader count puts the total at up to about 450,000. The true figure is probably higher, because some deaths are never recorded as war-related.

Who leaked the Russian death records?

The Belarusian pro-opposition group Cyber Partisans and the Ukrainian hacker operation Silent Crow said they breached Rosstat’s internal systems, gaining access to about 25,000 computers and extracting some 23 terabytes of data. They published their findings on 7 November and shared the data with Bloomberg News and a small group of other outlets.

Has Russia confirmed the figures?

No. Rosstat said it detected cyberattacks on its systems between 29 October and 1 November, but denied that its databases were compromised or that information was leaked. Russia has not published official casualty figures since the early months of the invasion, and military losses have been a state secret since 2015.

How do the leaked figures compare with independent counts?

They are higher than the 285,881 deaths identified by name by Mediazona and BBC Russian as of November, and higher than the roughly 352,000 estimated by Mediazona and Meduza from probate records through December 2025. Both of those projects say their counts are incomplete. Ukraine’s General Staff claims 1.6 million Russian deaths and serious injuries combined.

Why are the figures probably an underestimate?

Some soldiers are listed as missing, some bodies are unidentified, and some deaths from war wounds are recorded months later under other causes. Registration delays have also grown: the median lag between a death and its registration rose from about six weeks in late 2023 to more than four months in 2025.

Conclusion

For almost five years, the world has had to guess how many Russians have died in Ukraine. Moscow made the answer a state secret and stopped publishing the statistics that could reveal it. Now, through its own statistics agency’s records, the answer is emerging: nearly 400,000 dead — and probably more.

The leak does not end the war, and it will not decide the negotiations starting in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. But it removes one of the Kremlin’s longest-standing denials. The cost of the war, measured in Russian lives, is now written down in Russia’s own books.

Sources

• The Straits Times: Hacked records show 400,000 Russians killed in war on Ukraine — https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/hacked-records-show-400000-russians-killed-in-war-on-ukraine
• The Economic Times: Russia may have lost up to 450,000 people in Ukraine war, leaked death records suggest — https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/russia-may-have-lost-up-to-450000-people-in-ukraine-war-leaked-death-records-suggest/articleshow/135668126.cms
• UNITED24 Media: Ukrainian and Belarusian Hackers Expose Russia’s Secret War Death Records — https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukrainian-and-belarusian-hackers-expose-russias-secret-war-death-records-24183

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.