The BBC Russian service and the Russian site Mediazona indicated on Wednesday that they had identified more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At the end of February, Kyiv estimated the number of soldiers killed at 31,000, while the Russian army has only communicated on its military losses on very rare occasions.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday invoked "the law on state secrets" to justify the lack of official communication on military losses to Russians. Tens of thousands of inmates were recruited in Russian prisons, in exchange for a promise of release, notably by the Wagner paramilitary group but also by the regular army. According to the two media's examination of a sample of more than 1,000 prisoners, half of those cons were sent to the front. The count comes from the exploitation of certain information, such as official press releases, information published in the media and social networks, or collected by going to look at the graves in cemeteries.