According to data analyzed by the BBC, more than 70,000 people have now died in the Russian army in Ukraine.
And for the first time, volunteers — civilians who joined the armed forces after the war began — represent the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
Every day in the Russian media and on social networks the names of the victims in Ukraine, their obituaries and photos from their funerals are published.
BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have collected these names, along with names from other public sources, including official reports.
We checked whether the information was shared by the authorities or relatives of the deceased, and whether they were identified as having died in the war.
Thanks to new graves in cemeteries, the names of soldiers who died in Ukraine are also known. These are usually marked with flags and wreaths sent by the Ministry of Defense.
We have identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, but the true number is likely to be significantly higher. Some families do not share details of their relatives’ deaths publicly—and our analysis does not include names we could not verify, or the deaths of militias in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
Among them were 13,781 volunteers — about 20 percent — and the number of deaths among volunteers now exceeds other categories. Former prisoners, who joined in exchange for clemency for their crimes, used to be the highest, but they now account for 19 percent of all confirmed deaths. Mobilized soldiers — civilians called up to fight — account for 13 percent.
Since October last year, the number of weekly deaths among volunteers has not fallen below 100. In some weeks, we even recorded more than 310 deaths among volunteers.
As for Ukraine, the country rarely comments on the scale of battlefield deaths. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, but estimates based on U.S. intelligence suggest higher losses.
Rinat Khusniyarov’s story is typical of many of the volunteer soldiers who died. He came from Ufa in Bashkortostan and worked two jobs to make ends meet – at a tram depot and a plywood factory. He was 62 years old when he signed his contract with the Russian army last November.
He survived less than three months of combat, being killed on February 27. His obituary, on a local online memorial website, simply called him “a hard-working, decent man.”
According to the data we analyzed, most of the men who sign up come from small towns in parts of Russia where stable, well-paid work is difficult to find.
Most appear to be joining voluntarily, although some in the Chechen Republic have told human rights activists and lawyers of coercion and threats.
Some volunteers said they didn’t understand why the contracts they signed didn’t specify an end date. They have since approached pro-Kremlin journalists, asking, but to no avail, for help in terminating their employment.
Salaries in the military can be five to seven times higher than average wages in less affluent parts of the country, plus soldiers receive social benefits including free childcare and tax breaks. One-time payments for those who enlist have also repeatedly increased in value in many parts of Russia.
Most of the volunteers who died at the front were between 42 and 50 years old. They number 4,100 men in our list of over 13,000 volunteers. The oldest volunteer who died was 71 years old – in total 250 volunteers over 60 died in the war.
Russian soldiers have told the BBC that the rising number of volunteer casualties is partly due to their deployment in the most operationally challenging areas of the front, particularly the Donetsk region in the east, where they provide the backbone of reinforcements for weakened units, they told the BBC.
Russia’s “meat grinder” strategy continues unabated, according to Russian soldiers we spoke to. The term has been used to describe the way Moscow relentlessly sends waves of soldiers forward to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their positions to Russian artillery. Drone footage shared online shows Russian forces attacking Ukrainian positions with little to no equipment or support from artillery or military vehicles.
Sometimes hundreds of men have been killed in a single day. In recent weeks, the Russian army has made desperate, but unsuccessful, attempts to take the eastern Ukrainian cities of Khasiv Yar and Pokrovsk using such tactics.
An official study by the Russian Defense Ministry’s Highest Military Medical Directorate found that 39% of soldiers’ deaths are due to limb injuries. Mortality rates would be significantly lower if first aid and subsequent medical care were better.
The Russian government’s actions show that it does not want to force people to fight through a new, official mobilization wave. Instead, it is calling on more volunteers to sign up, and also offering incentives to do so.
Comments from regional officials in local parliaments suggest that they have been tasked from above to recruit people from their local districts. They advertise on job websites, contact men in debt and having problems with bailiffs, and run recruitment campaigns in higher education institutions.
Since 2022, convicted prisoners have also been encouraged to join up in exchange for their release, but now a new policy means that people facing criminal charges can accept a deal to go to war instead of facing trial. In return, their cases will be frozen and possibly dropped altogether.
A small number of the volunteers killed came from other countries. We have identified the names of 272 such men, many of whom came from Central Asia – 47 from Uzbekistan, 51 from Tajikistan and 26 from Kyrgyzstan.
Last year we saw reports of Russia recruiting people in Cuba, Iraq, Yemen and Serbia. Foreigners already living in Russia without valid work permits or visas, who agree to “work for the state,” are promised that they will not be deported and are offered a simplified route to citizenship if they survive the war. Many have later complained that they did not understand the papers – like Russian citizens, they have turned to the media for help.
The governments of India and Nepal have called on Moscow to stop sending their citizens to Ukraine and to repatriate the bodies of the dead. So far, the calls have gone unheeded.
Many new recruits who have joined the army have criticised the training they have received. One man who signed a contract with the Russian army in November last year told the BBC that he was promised two weeks of training at a shooting range before being sent to the front.
“In reality, people were just thrown onto the parade ground and given some equipment,” he said, adding that the equipment was poorly made.
“We were loaded onto trains, then onto trucks, and sent to the front. About half of us were thrown into battle straight from the road. As a result, some people went from the recruiting office to the front line within a week,” he said.
Samuel Cranny-Evans, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, says: “Basic knowledge of things like camouflage and concealment or how to move silently at night, how to move during the day without creating a profile for yourself,” should be taught as basic skills for the infantry.
Another soldier also told the BBC that the equipment is a problem, saying it “varies but usually it’s a random set of uniforms, standard boots that wear out in a day and a kit bag with a label saying it was made in the mid-20th century”.
“Any bulletproof vest and a cheap helmet. It’s impossible to fight in this. If you want to survive, you have to buy your own gear.”
