More than 400,000 Russians killed in Ukraine war, leaked records reveal

More than 400,000 Russians have been killed since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly five years ago — surpassing Russian fatalities in all wars combined since the Second World War — according to a leak of Moscow’s records.Belarusian and Ukrainian hackers opposing the Kremlin discovered 412,576 death certificates specifically tied to fatalities in the war, which were organized by Rosstat, Russia’s state statistics agency.The discovery is the first look at the Kremlin’s own estimates of the war casualties and highlights the staggering toll the conflict has inflicted on Russia.The death toll is nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II.The details were compiled by the Belarusian opposition-linked hacker group Cyber Partisans and the Ukrainian hacking collective Silent Crow, who dug through 11 million death certificates from Rosstat following a breach on Nov.1.

While Rosstat confirmed that a hack occurred, the Russian state agency denied that any sensitive information had been obtained.The estimates, however, fall in line with those published by war analysts and British intelligence on the toll Moscow’s meat-grinder tactics have taken.It also appears to match the findings published last week by Russian outlet Mediazona, which identified nearly 286,000 military personnel killed while deployed in Ukraine.

The outlet estimated that the true toll was closer to 500,000, matching what The Economist found just days later in their own analysis. The reports came just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that Russia suffered more than 54,000 casualties in October alone, the highest of any month since the war began.The deaths and injuries have put increased pressure on Putin to launch another mass conscription, which experts have said the Russian president is trying to avoid due to the major backlash over the last draft.Russian and Ukrainian offi...