Hackers who broke into Russia’s stats agency say 400,000–450,000 Russians have died in Ukraine war
Two hacking groups that say they broke into the Russian state statistics agency published estimates of Russian war deaths in Ukraine on Saturday, one of which put the toll at 393,881 and the other at 450,100.
The groups, the Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow, claimed on 1 November that they had penetrated the internal systems of the agency, Rosstat, and downloaded about 23 terabytes of data, including figures on Russian military losses, census materials and personal information. Rosstat confirmed that it was hit by cyberattacks between 29 October and 1 November but denied that any data had leaked.
The Cyber Partisans said they examined death records from 2022 through 27 August 2026, counting those classified under “military action” or its “consequences”, along with records that referred to combat in the text. The group acknowledged that its tally probably included civilians killed in the fighting, as well as victims of other wars.
Silent Crow drew on a wider set of categories in the database as it stood in late August 2026. It said it counted 440,982 cases, including, in addition to combat-related deaths, those attributed to terrorists attacks, 14,160 noncombat deaths of service members, and 13,671 deaths of people registered in Russia who died in occupied territory or in Ukraine with no cause listed.
The group then added an estimated 3,734 to 9,118 war deaths among records that listed no cause, basing the figure on the unusually high share of men among those who died in areas near the front. That brought its total to a range of 444,716 to 450,100. Silent Crow cautioned that the records’ “military action” category does not distinguish between soldiers and civilians, meaning its count also includes residents of cities hit by attacks. It said the files contain no names.
By comparison, as of 6 November, the independent news outlet Mediazona, the BBC and a team of volunteers had confirmed the names of 285,881 Russian soldiers killed. The list grew by 2,888 names over the past two weeks, though those are newly confirmed deaths and did not necessarily occur during that period. It is compiled from open sources, including statements by relatives, news reports, official announcements and photographs of graves, and is known to be incomplete.
In late October, The Economist estimated that between 374,000 and 770,000 Russian troops had been killed, and that total Russian casualties could reach 1.4 million to 2.1 million. Compared with the magazine’s deaths estimate in May, the low end of the range rose by 94,000 and the high end by 252,000, the Russian news outlet Agentstvo noted.
