By October 23, the named list of Russian military personnel killed in the war against Ukraine, maintained by Mediazona, BBC Russian and volunteers, had reached approximately 283,000 people. These are deaths confirmed through open sources, not a definitive total of all Russian military fatalities.
Researchers cross-check reports from relatives, regional outlets and authorities, funeral announcements and other verifiable information. As new material emerges, they clarify names, dates, places of residence and military units while trying to eliminate duplicate entries.
According to the updated database, the deaths of 7,920 officers of the Russian armed forces and other security bodies had been separately confirmed by October 23. The researchers note that the proportion of officers among the dead has changed as the nature of the fighting and methods of recruiting personnel have evolved.
Regular military units accounted for a substantial share of casualties early in the war. Later, deaths rose among prisoners recruited to fight, including with the Wagner private military company. In subsequent periods, volunteers made up an increasingly significant proportion of the identified dead.
The list remains incomplete: not every death becomes public, and information on some fatalities appears months later. More recent periods are generally less fully represented than earlier ones because the data is still being collected.
In addition to the named list, Mediazona and its partners use a separate statistical estimate of total deaths based on inheritance-registry records. That methodology was developed with Meduza, and its most recent update covered an earlier period. The two measures should not be conflated.