Leaked Rosstat database records more than 450,000 Russian war dead

A database hacked from Rosstat, Russia's state statistics agency, records more than 450,000 deaths among Russian combatants since the Kremlin launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022.

The file is built from death certificates and runs from the start of the war to 28 August. It was leaked last weekend and cross-checked against open sources including Russian court documents; nothing suggests falsification or artificially added entries, though the file has limits: not every death in it is tied to the invasion or confirmed in forensic reports, and servicemen still listed as missing, or whose certificates are being processed, are absent.

Two hacking groups, Kiberpartizany BY and Silent Crow — close to the Belarusian opposition and to pro-Ukrainian circles respectively — said the records cover only deaths entered in Russian civil archives. The groups previously disabled systems at the flag carrier Aeroflot.

By the file's own coding, at least 356,056 people died in "combat operations" (code Y36); 56,520 in military actions recorded without further detail (code Y89.1); 575 in "terrorist acts"; 13,671 in occupied territory with no stated cause; and 14,160 from external causes that may have been induced by the war, such as traffic accidents, disease and suicide. A further 9,118 deaths carry no explanation. For scale, the United States suffered about 405,000 fatal casualties in the Second World War.

Janis Kluge, an independent analyst, said the headline number is not what makes the leak significant. "The figure is not the novelty, but this leak is special because of the potential validation of other methods and being a direct source," he wrote. He added that he had matched identifications against Russian court rulings and found the same people in the database: "It is unlikely to be false data, although this does not confirm that the figures are the real ones."

Journalistic tallies — including a joint list maintained by the BBC and Russian outlet Mediazona, verified also by Bloomberg and Meduza — had until now identified 285,881 Russian dead from open sources, with estimates above 350,000 by the end of 2025. The database excludes the missing — about 280,000 across Russia and Ukraine together, according to Red Cross sources — and the wounded. The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimates 500,000 to 600,000 Ukrainian dead; Kyiv has published no official figure for its own losses, only about 90,000 missing.

The tables list one Spanish citizen, 29, killed in October 2024 in the battle for Kostiantinivka by an explosion, and nearly 200 Latin Americans on the Russian side. About 11,000 foreigners from a hundred countries have been identified fighting for Russia, more than 6,000 of them also holding Russian nationality and 80% from former Soviet republics. Uruguay does not appear in the register, yet it lost Matías Ignacio Amaro Silva, 36, a father of one, who answered an online advertisement for a cook's post with the Russian army and was sent to the front.