Leaked Russian records point to nearly 400,000 war-related deaths, Bloomberg reports
Nearly 400,000 deaths linked to Russia's war against Ukraine have been identified in leaked records from Russia's state statistics agency, Rosstat, according to a Bloomberg investigation published on November 8.
The database, obtained by the Belarusian opposition-linked hacker group Cyber Partisans and Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow, contains more than 11 million death records. Bloomberg was among the news organizations given access to the material.
Between February 24, 2022, and late August 2026, nearly 392,700 death certificates explicitly linked fatalities to the war, either through classification codes or references to military operations, shelling and drones.
Bloomberg could not conclusively authenticate the database but found no signs of fabrication. Its metadata was consistent with a genuine export, while overall death figures closely matched previously published official Russian statistics. Differences amounted to just 0.1% in 2021, 0.2% in 2022 and approximately 1% in 2023.
The findings are also broadly consistent with independent estimates. BBC Russian and Mediazona have identified 285,881 Russian military deaths by name, while a separate analysis by Mediazona and Meduza estimated approximately 352,000 deaths through December 2025 using inheritance records.
The leaked figures likely underestimate the full death toll. Some soldiers remain missing, others have not been identified, and registration delays can stretch for months. Bloomberg found that the median delay in recording war-related deaths exceeded four months in 2025.
Rosstat acknowledged cyberattacks on its systems in late October and early November but denied finding evidence that confidential information had been leaked. It did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment on the data.
Ukraine's General Staff estimates that Russia has suffered approximately 1.61 million personnel losses since the full-scale invasion, a broader category that includes wounded troops and is not directly comparable to the number of recorded deaths.