Russia’s Death Toll in Ukraine War Hits 500,000, Says Report
Russia’s military death toll in Ukraine has now passed the 50,000 mark, the BBC can confirm.
In the second 12 months on the front line – as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy – we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.
BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022.
New graves in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers.
BBC teams also combed through open-source information from official reports, newspapers and social media.
More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat – according to our findings – a reflection of how territorial gains have come at a huge human cost.
The overall death toll – of more than 50,000 – is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022.
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The actual number of Russian deaths is likely to be much higher.
Riot control agents such as tear gas are banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Russia and Ukraine are signatories.
While civilians can usually escape from tear gas used to break up riots or protests in cities, soldiers stuck in trenches without gas masks must either flee under enemy fire or risk suffocating on the gas.
Colonel Serhii Pakhomov, acting head of the military’s atomic, biological and chemical defence forces, said Kyiv had recorded around 900 uses of riot control agents by Russia in the past six months out of over 1,400 since the February 2022 invasion.
Russia mainly used K-51, VOH and RH-VO hand-grenades loaded with CS, CN and other gases, he told Reuters in an interview. Ukraine’s military previously alleged that Russian forces also used chloropicrin, which was used as poison gas in World War I.
Russia’s embassy in The Netherlands, where the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is based, said on X in January that allegations about Russia’s use of grenades with CN gas use unconfirmed data. Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
