Over 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion a year and a half ago, according to an independent tally conducted by the independent Mediazona news website and the BBC’s Russian service.
The two outlets have been verifying the number of Russian troops killed in Ukraine using publicly available information from media reports, social networks and official statements.
Among the 30,003 dead servicemen identified by the outlets are more than 2,400 officers of the Russian Armed Forces, 284 of whom were in the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher.
According to the tally, 5,637 killed soldiers were recruited from Russian prisons.
Another 3,167 killed soldiers had been reservists called up during Russia’s fall 2022 mass mobilization.
Some 2,441 fighters from private military companies were also killed, according to the journalists.
Last month, in a separate tally, Mediazona and the independent Meduza news website reported that the number of soldiers killed could be around 47,000. The journalists used a surge in probate cases opened for men under the age of 50 since the start of the war to calculate this figure.
Russian officials rarely comment on its war dead and the Russian Defense Ministry last updated its soldier death toll in September 2022, placing the figure at under 6,000 killed.
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