STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. More than 5,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the invasion, according to a tally of confirmed deaths updated this week by independent Russian media outlet iStories.
The figure is over three times higher than the official death toll of 1,351 which was last updated by the Russian Defense Ministry in March.
While Russia is believed to have suffered significant military losses since its February invasion of Ukraine, the exact number of killed soldiers has been subject to intense speculation with Western officials estimating the number to be over 15,000 and Ukrainian officials claiming it to be more than 42,000. iStories has verified the deaths of 5,107 soldiers.
The tally by iStories is likely to be far below the real number — because it is only based on publicly available social media posts and media reports — but it is one of the few independently managed databases of Russian losses, including names, ages and, often, the towns and villages where the dead men were from.
The Moscow Times created six graphs based on the iStories data to show what we know about the more than 5,000 soldiers killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine (Moscow Times).
