“More than half of the dead were not connected to the Russian army at the time of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
More than half of the dead (52% of the total number of casualties) were not connected to the Russian army at the time of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. In this category, journalists and volunteers included those who signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation after the start of the war. In the updated summary, they noted that there is a “rapid increase in casualties” among volunteer military personnel.
“Their share in the total mass continues to grow and now makes up 22% of the total number of confirmed losses of the Russian side,” the summary says. Many volunteers die within two to four weeks after arriving at the front.
For comparison, the publication provides data on confirmed losses among this category of Russian military personnel as of November 2023. At that time, volunteers accounted for only 14% of the total number of casualties.
“The real number of people who joined the army from civilian life already after the beginning of the invasion and died at the front is much higher, since we were not able to determine exactly how the 28% of the dead we established got to the front,” – writes the Russian service of the BBC -Si.
The share of convicts who were recruited for the war in the colonies is decreasing. In November 2023, they accounted for 26% of all losses, and now – 18%. At the same time, units made up of prisoners are still on the front line and “take part of the combat load on themselves,” the summary says.
Journalists of Mediazona and the Russian service of the BBC, with the help of a team of volunteers, have been counting reports about the death of Russian soldiers in the mass media, on the websites of authorities or in social networks since the first day of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. The calculation does not take into account the losses of military formations from the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
Journalists emphasize that the real losses of the Russian army in the Russian-Ukrainian war are greater, since not all reports about the deaths of Russian soldiers fall into open sources.
In early July, Meduza and Mediazona published a study that estimated the total number of Russian servicemen killed using mathematical methods and excess mortality data. The authors of the study came to the conclusion that at that time, during two and a half years of war, about 120 thousand Russian soldiers died.