An investigation based on confidential documents from the Russian statistics agency Rosstat sheds new light on the true scale of human losses suffered by Moscow since the start of the full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022. According to Bloomberg, which was able to analyze a vast volume of data stolen by activist hackers, the Russian death toll has surpassed 400,000.
The data source: 23 terabytes stolen by hackers
The information comes from the analysis of more than 11 million death certificates containing sensitive details such as age, place and residence at the time of death. The files were stolen by two opposition-linked hacker groups:
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The Belarusian collective Cyber Partisans (Kiberpartizany BY);
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The Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow.
The groups managed to breach systems and steal approximately 23 terabytes of data, including internal documents, demographic and economic statistics, and detailed records of military losses. Subsequently, the material was shared with Bloomberg News and a small number of international news outlets for independent verification.
Comparing estimates: 393,000 or 450,000 dead?
With access to the raw databases, the two hacker groups produced independent estimates, albeit based on different methodological criteria:
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Kiberpartizany BY: As of August 27, 2026, the 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.
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Silent Crow: The estimate is even higher, reaching 450,100 deaths. 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 tallies and statistics on losses sustained at the front.
To date, one of the most credible independent sources has been the joint database of 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, that archive contained approximately 286,000 confirmed names, a count that is nevertheless subject to unavoidable update delays and only partially covers the most recent months of the conflict.
Rosstat data revealed through the cyber intrusion now provide numerical corroboration at a broad demographic scale, confirming that the human cost of the war continues to rise at a staggering pace.
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