Their number is a carefully guarded secret and largely underestimated by Moscow. But most of the thousands of Russian soldiers who have died in Ukraine are very young, from the poorest regions of their country and often from its ethnic minorities, experts say.
The Kremlin has offered no information in this regard since March 25, a month and a day after the start of the war. By then, some 1,351 of his soldiers had fallen in battle.
Seven weeks of destructive fighting later, Kyiv estimates their number at 27,000 Russian dead. A high figure, according to multiple military and Western analysts, for whom Moscow’s assessments, however, are largely underestimated.
“Russia has probably suffered losses corresponding to a third of the ground combat force it committed in February,” the British Ministry of Defense observed on Sunday. That is, about 50,000 Russian soldiers wounded or killed.
With a ratio of three wounded per dead recognized by Moscow at the beginning of the conflict, we would then reach 12,500 dead Russians in less than three months. Not far from the 15,000 Soviet dead during a decade of war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), a figure that caused national trauma.
“We bow to our comrades-in-arms who died bravely in a just fight,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a tribute on May 9, Victory Day over the Nazis in 1945.
The Russian-language portal Mediazona says it has confirmed the deaths of 2,099 Russian soldiers in combat as of May 6. A large part of them are between 21 and 23 years old, 74 of them are not even 20 years old, this medium specifies. Most of the dead come from southern Russia, including the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, as well as central Siberia, they say.
The highest number of deaths (135) was confirmed among soldiers from the Muslim region of Dagestan, followed by Buryats (98), a Mongol minority from Buryatia, a Siberian province.
A doctor interviewed by AFP in April on condition of anonymity in the town of Zaporijjia (southern Ukraine) after having lived for more than a month under the siege and bombardment of Mariupol assured the agency that there were “three waves” of occupants in his city. The pro-Russian separatists in Donbass (eastern Ukraine) had been succeeded by the Buryats, who had “plundered everything”, then the Chechens, whom he accused of being guilty of a “manhunt”.
“The largest number of soldiers and army officers come from small towns and villages in Russia. This is related to socio-economic and (…) educational stratification,” explains Pavel Luzin, a commentator on the Riddle Russia web portal.
Because “the requirements for military service” in this army corps are “relatively low,” he says, the best soldiers and future officers prefer other branches, such as “air and space forces, strategic ballistics, and the navy.”
Local media and social media in Dagestan, one of Russia’s poorest regions devastated for years by an Islamic insurgency, are filled with images of grieving parents receiving condolences from officials.
Kamil Iziiev, head of the Buynaksky district in Dagestan, posted a video on Telegram in May in which he presented awards to the families of five fallen soldiers. “They must continue to live as mothers of children whose fathers heroically gave their lives,” he said.
The first Russian soldier whose death has been officially confirmed by Moscow is Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, a young Dagestani who died saving his comrades, according to state media. He was decorated posthumously on March 4 by Vladimir Putin himself, who praised the role played by ethnic minorities in Ukraine. “I am proud to be part of this world, of this powerful, strong, multinational people that is Russia,” he said.
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