Files described by the group Cyber Partisans as internal documents of Russia's federal statistics agency, Rosstat, contain figures indicating billions of rubles in unpaid wages in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's Donetsk region. On November 4, The Insider published an analysis of eight sample documents. The authenticity of the entire collection has not been established by an independent forensic examination.
One purported agency spreadsheet records 3.13 billion rubles in wage arrears as of May 1, 2023, in the territory Russia calls the Donetsk People's Republic. For comparison, the analysis uses Rosstat's published figure of 695.5 million rubles for the rest of Russia. The figures cover different territories and should not be treated as components of a single nationwide total.
According to the spreadsheet examined, arrears rose from 1.48 billion to 3.13 billion rubles between January and May 2023, affecting 66,300 workers. Of the total, 2.94 billion rubles, or 93.8%, was attributed to companies' lack of their own funds. Debts dating from 2021 or earlier amounted to 1.32 billion rubles, while 957 million rubles was owed to people dismissed before the end of 2022. Small businesses were excluded from the figures.
Other samples contain figures for the first quarter of 2023: 32.1% of organizations were classified as loss-making, and overdue accounts payable stood at 92 billion rubles out of total payables of 274.7 billion rubles. A purported April 2026 briefing gives an average monthly wage of 79,000 rubles and a workforce of 125,400 at organizations in Donetsk employing more than 15 people.
Cyber Partisans claims to have gained access to approximately 25,000 computers and several terabytes of files. The claimed scale of access has not been independently corroborated. Rosstat previously acknowledged a cyberattack on its systems but denied that its databases had been compromised or protected information leaked.