Hack of Secret Rosstat (Russian Statistical Agency) Data Reveals Toll of 400,000 Russian Soldiers Killed

An investigation based on confidential documents from the Russian statistical agency Rosstat sheds new light on the true scale of the human losses suffered by Moscow since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Bloomberg, which was able to review a vast trove of data stolen by hacktivists, the Russian death toll has exceeded 400,000.

Source of the data: 23 terabytes stolen by hackers

The information comes from an analysis of more than 11 million death certificates, including sensitive details such as age, place of death, and residence. The files were stolen by two opposition-linked hacking groups:

• The Belarusian collective Cyber Partisans (Kiberpartizany BY);

• The Ukrainian hacking group Silent Crow.

The groups managed to breach and steal roughly 23 terabytes of data, including internal documents, demographic and economic statistics, and detailed records of military losses. The material was subsequently shared with Bloomberg News and a limited number of international outlets for independent verification.

Competing estimates: 393,000 or 450,000 dead?

With access to the raw databases, the two hacking groups produced independent estimates, albeit using different methodological criteria:

• Kiberpartizany BY: As of August 27, 2026, its estimate stands at 393,881 Russian citizens dead. The calculation considered only deaths in which military action or the direct consequences of the conflict were explicitly recorded as the cause of death.

• Silent Crow: Its estimate is even higher, reaching 450,100 dead. This figure includes not only those killed in combat, but also non-combat losses among military personnel, deaths officially classified as terrorist acts, and deaths of people registered in Russia who died in occupied territories or in Ukraine without a formally established specific cause.

Comparison with public estimates and Moscow's silence

Since September 2022, the Russian government has stopped publishing official casualty figures and statistics concerning losses suffered at the front.

Until now, one of the most authoritative independent sources had been the joint database maintained by the Russian service of BBC News and the independent outlet Mediazona, based solely on verified names and profiles of identified soldiers. As of November 8, the archive contained approximately 286,000 confirmed names, a count that inevitably faces updating delays and only partially covers the most recent months of the conflict.

The Rosstat data uncovered through the cyber intrusion now provides macro-demographic numerical corroboration, confirming that the human cost of the war continues to rise at a staggering pace.