Some 16,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since April as the death rate on the front lines has been climbing this year.
The new figures come from a data project carried out by the BBC’s Russia service and independent Russian media outlet Mediazona.
The project only records deaths it has been able to identify from official reports, the media and satellite analysis of Russian graveyards, so the numbers are likely to be a conservative estimate of total deaths.
Mediazona said that “as of August 30, we know the names of 66,471 Russian soldiers killed in the war”. Previously, in April, it announced it had found more than 50,000 names of Russians killed.
In June, the Ministry of Defence estimated that Russia had sustained 70,000 casualties in the two months prior, and predicted that Russia would continue to record an average of 1,000 casualties a day due over the coming months due to an increase in Russian pressure across the front line. Casualties are defined as deaths or injuries.
Mediazona said that a 4,600 increase in deaths over the last four weeks was not linked to Ukraine’s Kursk incursion or Russia’s advance in the east, as researchers were still working though a backlog of death reports.
