Key facts
- Russia 200, a casualty-tracking database by Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service, lists nearly 283,000 named dead soldiers.
- The U.K. Foreign Office and Dutch intelligence services estimate Russia's losses at more than half a million, the report said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in July that 700,000 Russian soldiers had died fighting in Ukraine.
- Mediazona editor Dmitry Treshchanin said volunteers documenting graves were attacked at cemeteries.
- Military analyst Ian Matveev said concealment helps Moscow enlist recruits and present progress to Donald Trump.
- Russia 200 recorded almost 90,000 court cases in 2025 on soldiers declared missing or dead, a more than tenfold rise.
A Russian court in Yaroslavl sentenced a middle-aged man to 14 years in a penal colony in September for photographing the gravestones of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, according to a report published November 12, 2026. The sentence is one usually reserved for the country's most twisted killers, the report said.
With the Kremlin reluctant to publish battlefield casualty figures, independent journalists and activists have used photography to document the war's death toll. In recent months, Russian authorities have warned that photographing military graves could result in life imprisonment, and the Federal Security Service has patrolled cemeteries in search of offenders. Since the summer, several dozen people across Russia have been arrested, with the official charge in closed trials being treason, specifically cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence services.
Russia 200, a casualty-tracking database created by independent outlet Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service, lists the names of nearly 283,000 dead soldiers, including details about the circumstances of their deaths. Mediazona draws on open-source information such as social media posts and local media reports, but does not have the resources and access to document every battlefield fatality. Other organizations estimate the death toll to be significantly higher: the U.K. Foreign Office and Dutch intelligence services estimate Russia's losses at more than half a million, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in July that 700,000 Russian soldiers had died fighting in Ukraine.