Rosstat hack yields data suggesting over 390,000 Russian deaths in Ukraine war

Two hacker groups, Kiberpartizany BY and Silent Crow, claim to have breached Russia's Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), stealing approximately 23 terabytes of data including internal documents, demographic statistics and information on Russian losses in the war against Ukraine.

Kiberpartizany BY calculates that at least 393,881 Russian citizens had been killed in the war as of 27 August 2026, counting deaths in which military action or its consequences were listed as the cause. Silent Crow puts the figure higher — at 450,100 dead — by also including non-combat losses among military personnel, deaths marked as terrorist acts, and deaths of people registered in Russia who died in occupied territories or in Ukraine where the exact cause was not established.

The gap between the two estimates reflects their differing methodologies. Russia has not released official combat-loss statistics since September 2022, and from 2024 Rosstat stopped publishing annual data on causes of death, making independent demographic assessments significantly harder.

For comparison, the joint database maintained by BBC News Russian Service and Mediazona contained around 286,000 individually named Russian servicemen as of 8 November — a list acknowledged to be incomplete, particularly for recent months. A separate joint study by Meduza and Mediazona, based on inheritance registry data, estimated Russian serviceman deaths at roughly 350,000 by the end of 2025. The hackers' figures are therefore broadly consistent with previously published independent research, though that alignment does not confirm the accuracy of any individual number.

Meduza and Mediazona said they had obtained access to the published data and begun verifying both its authenticity and completeness. Investigators must also rule out deliberate falsification and account for the fact that Rosstat's internal databases do not carry up-to-date records on those listed as missing, who may only be declared dead after a prolonged period.