More than 450,000 people on the Russian side have died since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a leaked database stolen from Russia’s state statistics agency, Rosstat. The records, based on death certificates, cover the period from the beginning of the war until 28 August 2026 and provide the first publicly available database derived directly from Russia’s official civil registration records documenting the deaths. They include at least one Spanish citizen and dozens of Latin Americans who died while serving in Russian military forces.
The database does not represent a complete account of Russian military fatalities. It excludes missing personnel and people whose death certificates were still being processed at the time the records were compiled. Some deaths included in the files are also unrelated to the invasion of Ukraine or have not been confirmed through forensic reports. Nevertheless, comparisons with independent sources, including Russian court documents and other publicly available records, have found no evidence that the database was fabricated or artificially supplemented.
The information was leaked over the weekend by two hacking groups, Kiberpartizany BY and Silent Crow, which are associated respectively with the Belarusian opposition and pro-Ukrainian activities. Both groups have targeted Russian digital infrastructure, including systems belonging to Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, which they disabled last year. The leaked records have been examined by EL PAÍS, Bloomberg, Mediazona, Meduza and independent experts, including analyst Janis Kluge.
Until now, estimates of Russian military deaths have relied largely on journalistic investigations and the identification of individual casualties through public records. The BBC and the independent Russian outlet Mediazona have maintained a database of named Russian combatants killed in the war. They had identified 285,881 deaths through open sources, while an analysis of inheritance records suggested that the total had exceeded 350,000 by the end of 2025.
Kluge said the significance of the newly leaked material lay less in the overall figure than in its potential to validate estimates produced through other methods. “The figure of deaths resulting from the hacking of the official database is not the novelty, but this leak is special because of its potential to validate other methods and because it is a direct source,” he wrote on X. He said he had compared individual identities with Russian court judgments and found that people appearing in legal documents were also listed in the database. Although he considered fabrication unlikely, he cautioned that this did not establish that the figures represented the actual total.
The records classify deaths under several categories. At least 356,056 people were registered as having died in combat operations under code Y36, while another 56,520 were recorded under a category covering military actions without further details, code Y89.1. The database also lists 575 deaths attributed to terrorist acts, 13,671 deaths in occupied territories for which no cause was established, and 14,160 deaths from external causes that could have been connected to the war, including traffic accidents, illnesses and suicides. A further 9,118 deaths have no accompanying explanation.
The scale of the recorded fatalities is comparable with major historical military losses. The United States suffered approximately 405,000 military deaths during the Second World War. However, the Russian database does not include the approximately 280,000 people missing across Russia and Ukraine combined, according to sources cited from the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the much larger number of wounded personnel.
Ukraine has not released comprehensive official figures for military deaths during the nearly five years of war, although it has acknowledged approximately 90,000 missing personnel. The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimates that between 500,000 and 600,000 Ukrainians have died in the conflict.
The leaked Russian records also provide evidence of the involvement and deaths of foreign nationals recruited into Russian forces. Among them is a 29-year-old Spanish citizen who died in October 2024 during the battle for Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region. His death, attributed to an explosion and classified under code Y36.2, was independently verified by EL PAÍS. Fighting over the area remains ongoing. On the Ukrainian side, at least ten Spanish citizens are known to have died, according to published reports, although no official casualty register exists.
Latin America accounts for almost 200 deaths on the Russian side, although the total cannot be independently verified from the leaked database because it provides aggregate figures by nationality without allowing access to every individual record. Bloomberg has identified approximately 11,000 foreign nationals from around 100 countries fighting for Russia. More than 6,000 of them also held Russian nationality, while 80 per cent originated from countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
Cuba and Colombia have the largest numbers of death certificates among Latin American countries in the leaked records. EL PAÍS verified 13 documents involving Cuban nationals and 20 involving Colombians, although the two countries account for dozens of additional entries that could not all be individually examined. Deaths in combat were also verified among six Brazilians, one Chilean, 13 Salvadorans, one Haitian, three Panamanians, one Paraguayan, seven Peruvians and two Venezuelans. No records were found for citizens of Bolivia, Mexico or Uruguay.
The absence of Uruguay from the database does not mean that none of its citizens have died while serving Russia. Matías Ignacio Amaro Silva, a 36-year-old father of a young daughter, signed a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry after seeing an online advertisement offering work as a cook in the invading army. According to accounts given by his family to the Uruguayan press, he was instead assigned to combat duties. His relatives lost contact with him on 11 April this year and subsequently learnt of his death from another member of his unit.
Recruitment advertisements for the Russian military have proliferated online, particularly on Telegram and VKontakte, often promising high salaries and limited risks for positions such as drone pilots and truck drivers. Some advertisements reportedly use images of young Russian women, occasionally generated using artificial intelligence, to attract potential recruits. The Kremlin has also introduced financial commissions for recruiters who bring new personnel into the armed forces. However, military contracts do not necessarily guarantee the advertised positions, allowing the Defence Ministry to deploy recruits to frontline combat units. India and Cuba, both countries with friendly relations with Russia, have also reported cases in which their citizens were allegedly deceived into joining the war.
The database contains other discrepancies and previously unverified details. It does not list the thousands of North Korean soldiers believed to have died fighting in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The BBC estimates that approximately 2,300 North Korean military personnel have been killed, based on an analysis of names inscribed on a memorial in Pyongyang. By contrast, the Russian records contain three South Korean nationals who died fighting for Russia.
One South Korean death certificate contradicts an official account of the same incident. The document identifies a 40-year-old man born in Daegu who died on 11 March this year in Soldatskoye, in Russia’s Kursk region, from multiple injuries caused by an explosion during combat operations. On the same day, the regional governor, Alexander Khinshtein, announced the death of a volunteer of the same age in the same locality, claiming that his civilian vehicle had been struck by a first-person-view drone. According to the governor, the deceased came from the Caribbean island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The records have also enabled independent Russian media to verify individual cases involving prominent figures. Volodymyr Podoliak, the elder brother of Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, died in May 2024 in Zaporizhzhia while fighting for Russia. A member of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, he had received the Order of Courage twice. His brother had previously described him in 2021 as an ordinary retired military serviceman without publicly commenting on his death.
Among the other entries is Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former head of the Wagner mercenary group, who died in August 2023 when his aircraft crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino. His death certificate attributes his injuries to multiple parts of the body but does not establish whether the incident was intentional, recording the cause under code Y33.8, covering other specified injuries of undetermined intent. Ten people, including two civilian pilots and a flight attendant, died in the crash.
The database also records the death of Russell Bentley, a Texas-born American known as the Cowboy of Donbas, who joined Moscow-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015. Four Russian soldiers were subsequently sentenced by a court in occupied Donetsk to prison terms of between 11 and 12 years for torturing and murdering him in April 2024. His death certificate nevertheless records the cause as undetermined.
