An estimated 47,000 Russian men under the age of 50 have been killed in the war in Ukraine according to calculations by independent Russian media outlets Mediazona and Meduza, along with a researcher from the University of Tübingen.
Specifically, Mediazona reports that, with a 95% certainty, the death toll estimate lies between 40,000 and 55,000 killed.
They added the caveat, however, that their estimate did not consider military casualties of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic.
The media outlets and university researcher additionally calculated the numbers of Russian military personnel who had been wounded but not killed. These estimations, Mediazona notes, are bound to be less accurate.
Mediazona reports that not only does nobody aside from higher-ups in the Kremlin know the exact figure of Russian deaths, and that they are unlikely to publish that number, but that the Russian government has a record of objectively underreporting the figure.
The Russian media outlet writes that in September of last year, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported a total Russian death count of 5,937. They report that, at that point, their own figure, a figure they write was based on publicly available data, was higher.
While, highly critical and skeptical of Russian government data on the matter, Mediazona adds another consideration. They write that the political reasons regarding why the Russian government would likely not be accurate in reporting their own losses are the same reasons why skepticism is also healthy when considering Russian losses published by Ukrainian and Western media.
How did the independent Russian media outlets determine 47,000 Russian deaths?
Using the National Probate Registry, the media outlets had access to millions of opened probate cases. While there remained many cases not in the registry, and they didn’t have access to the entire registry, they were able to compare their sample, which was large enough to be representative, with Russian pre-war mortality data.
Using this method, it’s possible to see what proportions of deaths of various age groups and social standings end up on the registry.
In order to determine mortality levels, they needed “to calculate the ratio between the number of entries we found in the registry and the number of deaths during the same period within the same age group.”
Using their methods, Mediazona created graphs, featured in their report, that show wartime deaths.