Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, more than 3 thousand Russian military has died. Although the Ministry of Defense of Russia does not update information about the dead since the end of March, soldiers, officers and those who were officially began to be called “volunteers” are buried in the Russian Federation daily. This was reported by the Russian service BBC.
It is obvious that these are incomplete numbers, since the Russian media and regional authorities call far from all the dead, even if their bodies are delivered to relatives and buried. In some cities, entire alleys are allocated for the burial of the dead in Ukraine. So, at the Arkhangelsk cemetery near Ulyanovsk, after the outbreak of war, 42 fresh graves of the military appeared in Ukraine. Of these, the names 21 of the deceased were not called publicly and were not mentioned even in social networks. In the cemetery “Kurgan” in Kazan previously unknown names – 30%. In the Mikhailovsky cemetery near Stavropol is also almost 30%. On the military alley of the Kopan cemetery near Krasnodar – all 100%.
BBC suggests that the list of confirmed losses contains at least 40-60% less names of the dead than really buried in Russia. And according to intelligence of Great Britain, by the end of May, Russia lost about 15 thousand people in Ukraine. According to the General Staff of Ukraine, the number of dead Russian military exceeded 30 thousand.
Over the past month, the media and officials are increasingly mentioning among the dead “volunteers”, although they did not write about them before. Some of them fought in Ukraine as part of some Cossack detachments, others underwent weekly training at the University of Special Forces in Chechnya and, apparently, signed a short -term contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. 30% of dead volunteers – people over 40 years old, ten dead volunteers have turned more than 50 years old.
Most of the Russian military, whose deaths reported by the media and the authorities, were immigrants from Dagestan – 176 people. In second place in Buryatia (136 dead). On the third – Volgograd region (109 dead).
Of the 3052 Russian military who died in Ukraine, 152 are the so -called senior officers (generals, colonels, lieutenant colonel, major). Another 405 are younger army officers. The total more than 18% of the known dead are officers.
The list of losses that the BBC managed to confirm are 119 employees of the Russian Guard, including the fighters of the elite detachments “Vityaz”, “Rosich” and “Typhoon”. Among the dead there are at least 53 fighters of the GRU special forces and the Lt. Col. Special forces of the FSB “Alpha”. All these units are considered one of the strongest in Russia.