A new investigation using open intelligence sources provides an overview of Russian military casualties in the war in Ukraine, one of the Kremlin’s most closely guarded secrets.

The investigation was conducted by investigative journalists from MediaZona and Meduza, who also turned to experts Dmytro Kobak, a professor of machine learning at the University of Tübingen and a researcher on excess mortality.

They found a way to estimate Russian losses using only data from open sources: the register of inheritance cases of Russia and Rosstat statistics.

Using this data and statistical modeling, the researchers estimated that by the end of May this year, about 47,000 Russian men under the age of 50 had died in the war started by Vladimir Putin.

A huge number of Russian soldiers died in the fighting in eastern Ukraine

“In 2022 and 2023, the number of inheritance cases for men, especially young ones, increased dramatically. If you know how often inheritance cases are opened for those who died in a certain age group, then this increase can be used to determine the excess mortality of men – that is, the real number of those who died in the war,” they explain.

They also point out that the figure of 47 thousand means only the number of Russian citizens killed in the war and does not include the losses of separatists in the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics”.

According to the investigation, about 25 thousand Russian men under the age of 50 died in the war last year, and from the beginning of this year to May 27, 2023 – another 22 thousand. The figures appear to back up claims by Ukrainian officials, as well as independent assessments, which say Russia suffered huge losses in the winter months as it focused on capturing the town of Bakhmut.

In fact, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself several times cited the large number of losses recorded by the Russians in Bakhmut compared to the Ukrainians as one of the reasons why he refused to leave this city located in the east of Ukraine.

A new estimate by Russian investigative journalists, with the help of Professor Kobak of the University of Tübingen, has a 95% confidence in the range of 40,000-55,000 Russian soldiers killed by the end of May, data from the Russian Heritage Register and statistical modeling confirm the official death toll in Russia, released by Rosstat.

“The last time the Ministry of Defense reported losses was in September 2022. Then Serhii Shoigu said that 5,937 soldiers had died. This number has nothing to do with reality,” the investigators note.

Russia’s losses in the “special military operation”

Knowing the number of soldiers killed in the war, it is possible to estimate the number of wounded.

An analysis by Professor Kobak estimates Russia’s “irreparable losses” in the war to be at least 125,000 soldiers, including those seriously wounded.

This count only partially includes servicemen who are considered missing but not captured by Ukrainian forces. As in the case of the number of dead, the wounded in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” are also not taken into account here.

Researchers note that the most common estimates of the ratio of wounded to dead in wars in the industrial and post-industrial eras are “3 to 1” (or 3.5 to 1), that is, three wounded for every killed soldier. This average proportion was established on the basis of an analysis of human losses during the Second World War and other wars of the 20th century.

In addition to this criterion, the analysis also took into account reports of losses suffered by some units of the Russian army, as well as official data on payments by the Moscow Ministry of Defense to wounded soldiers and their families.

Since the estimate of the number of wounded is weighted with the official data of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, the final figure becomes more conservative.

By the way, even the “3 to 1” estimate of the ratio of wounded Russian soldiers to casualties during the war in Ukraine is criticized by the historian and military researcher Christopher Lawrence, director of the Dupuis Institute, on the grounds that it does not reflect the loss of casualties in the largest military conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

According to some estimates, this ratio should be at least 4-5 to 1. However, it is believed that the Ukrainian army, and not only the Russian one, received more wounded than in other modern conflicts.

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