Russia’s state statistics agency, Rosstat, recorded 393,881 to 450,100 dead on Russia’s side in the war through late August, two hacker groups that broke into its systems, Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow, claim. Their figures cannot be independently verified. They sit well above the number of dead soldiers journalists have named from public sources, and below expert estimates of the real toll.

Russia does not publish its war dead, so every count has been pieced together from outside, from obituaries and graves or from Ukraine’s battlefield estimates. Records kept inside the Russian state offer a rare check on those numbers. The check comes as Russia’s losses keep climbing: October was its costliest month of the full-scale war by Ukraine’s count, while each square kilometer it takes costs it more soldiers than before.

Ukraine’s General Staff puts Russia’s killed and wounded at about 1.6 million, and it counted 16,130 in the first week of November alone, its highest weekly figure of the war.

Two hacker groups, two counts from the same records

Rosstat’s website went down on the night of 1 November. Belarusian hacker group Cyber Partisans says it took about 10 terabytes of data in what its spokesperson Zmitser Shchyhelski called a strategic cyber operation, Radio Liberty’s Belarusian service Svaboda reported. Silent Crow, another hacker group, published its own count from the same records.

The Cyber Partisans’ count, at least 393,881 dead on Russia’s side from 2022 to 27 August 2026, includes only records whose cause of death names war. These are the international disease codes for operations of war and their consequences, or a cause written out as combat.

Silent Crow arrives at 450,100 through 28 August, its own site shows. It casts a wider net, adding 14,160 non-combat deaths of servicemen and 13,671 people registered in Russia who died in occupied territory with no cause given. More than half of the dead whose place of death is recorded died in Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk Oblast.

Both counts cover only deaths that entered Russia’s civil registries. The wounded, the missing, and foreign mercenaries are not in them. The war code does not separate soldiers from civilians, Silent Crow notes, so a share of the dead are residents of shelled towns, though 99.4% of those it counted are men.

How the hackers’ counts compare with other tallies

Working with volunteers and Russian outlet Mediazona, the BBC Russian Service has named 285,023 Russian soldiers killed in the full-scale invasion as of 30 October. Experts estimate its list captures 45% to 55% of the dead, putting the real toll at 518,224 to 633,384, the BBC said.

Cyber Partisans argue their figure fits Ukraine’s far larger count of Russian losses. Total losses, which include the wounded, disabled, and missing, usually run three to five times the number of dead, the group noted.

Russia lost more troops in the first week of November than in any other week of its full-scale war, Ukraine’s General Staff said on 8 November. The new high follows two daily records, and Ukraine’s drone force commander sees Russia feeding even more men into the fight. Germany’s defense minister says the losses are buying Moscow nothing on the ground.

Russia keeps throwing infantry at Ukraine’s defenses in Donbas and the south, day after day. Moscow shows no sign of easing off: its 2027 budget sets aside two rubles for the army for every one spent on welfare, schools, and hospitals. Diplomacy is moving at the same time. The first three-way talks between the US, Ukraine, and Russia since February are due in Abu Dhabi next week. Until Russia agrees to stop, the price of its war is counted in soldiers, week after week.

A Russian regiment a day, by Ukraine’s count

Russian forces lost 16,130 troops killed and wounded from 1 to 7 November, the General Staff wrote. That averages more than 2,300 a day, or nearly a hundred an hour. Each day’s toll equals an average Russian motorized rifle regiment, it added. The figures are Ukraine’s estimates and cannot be independently verified.

The General Staff put the blame on Russia’s commanders. They keep sending soldiers into “senseless ‘meat’ assaults,” it said, while Ukraine’s Defense Forces defend the country “methodically and effectively.”

The weekly record caps a run of daily ones. On 1 November alone, Ukraine’s forces took out 2,500 Russian troops, the most in a single day of the full-scale war, the General Staff reported. That beat the 2,250 of 21 October, the costliest day of a record month in which Russia lost 54,400 troops.

The heaviest fighting comes near Kostiantynivka

On 7 November, Ukraine’s troops recorded 199 clashes along the front, the General Staff’s morning update showed. The heaviest pressure came near Kostiantynivka in Donetsk Oblast, with 23 Russian assaults. Russian troops also pushed toward Dobropillia and on the Huliaipole direction in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. That day, Russia fired 7,557 kamikaze drones and dropped 235 guided aerial bombs. In one recent week, Russian forces launched nearly 8,000 Molniya and Lancet drones at the front alone.

The day cost Russia another 2,290 troops. Its total since February 2022 now stands at about 1,606,400 killed and wounded, the General Staff’s tally shows.

Ukraine’s drone commander sees more Russians at the front, not fewer

Robert Brovdi, callsign Madyar, commands Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. His drone pilots killed or wounded 751 Russian troops on 5 November, a new daily high for the force, he wrote on Telegram. The previous peak, 708, came on 1 November.

Brovdi tied the climbing count to Russia’s manpower. “This points to an unprecedented buildup of enemy manpower at the front,” he wrote, blaming Russia’s poorly hidden mobilization. Of his pilots’ tally, 71% came on the Dobropillia and Huliaipole directions. On the Huliaipole direction, a Russian division praised for taking Mala Tokmachka a year ago is still trying to capture it.

In Moscow, meanwhile, police detained young people in the central Kitay-gorod area on 7 November and handed adults draft notices, Russian Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti reported. “They bring in 10 people at a time, hand out draft notices, and take them away,” released detainees told the channel.

Germany’s defense minister sees no Russian progress on the ground

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius gave a lower estimate than Kyiv’s, but described the same battlefield. “On the ground, the Russian armed forces are making no progress, the losses are enormous, 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers a month,” he told the Berliner Morgenpost, Focus Online reported.

The same interview brought bad news for Ukraine’s air defense. Pistorius ruled out more German Patriot systems for now, saying Berlin would not get replacements for what it gives. Other countries now have to do more, he said.

Russia lost more troops in October than in any other month of its full-scale war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 1 November. Ukrainian forces also took back more land than Russian troops captured over the month, he added.

Russia keeps sending infantry against Ukraine's lines in Donbas and along the northern border. By summer, it was already losing more soldiers than it could recruit, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in June. October's count shows the price climbing again, while the ground Russia gains for it shrinks.

A record month and a record day

Over October, Russia lost 54,400 troops killed and seriously wounded, Zelenskyy said, the most of any month since the full-scale invasion began. The previous monthly high, 48,670, dated from December 2024, according to the General Staff's figures.

Russia's costliest single day came on 21 October, with 2,250 troops lost, Zelenskyy added. Over the month, Russia averaged 1,755 losses a day. The figures are Ukraine's estimates and cannot be independently verified.

A Russian region's worth of soldiers

In infographics published with the figures, the General Staff compared the toll to things Russians know. It is roughly the entire population of Chukotka, a remote Russian region in the Far East home to fewer than 50,000 people. It is also about as many soldiers as march in nine military parades on Red Square, or enough to fill about 200 Moscow subway cars. "This is the price Russia pays for its aggression," one of them reads.

More ground back than lost

Ukraine's Defense Forces liberated 96.2 km² in October, 10.4 km² more than Russian troops captured, Zelenskyy said. That puts Russia's gains for the month at 85.8 km². In mid-October, he said Ukraine had liberated more land than Russia captured since the start of fall.

Zelenskyy thanked every brigade and unit for the result. "To stop these insane losses, Russia only needs to choose a ceasefire and diplomacy," he wrote.

Russia's reported losses have climbed through 2026, and Moscow keeps looking for more men. In September, Brigadier General Denys Prokopenko warned that Russia may mobilize up to 600,000 troops for its next offensive.

Ukraine’s Defense Forces inflicted an estimated 49,040 personnel losses on Russian forces in October as of 29 October, setting a new monthly record since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s General Staff said.

The figure points to the growing human cost of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukraine’s military says Russian losses are rising faster than Moscow can replenish its units, making it increasingly costly for Russia to sustain its offensive operations.

October losses surpass previous record

The previous monthly record was set in December 2024, when Russian forces suffered an estimated 48,670 personnel losses, according to the General Staff.

October’s total had already surpassed that figure by 370 personnel as of 29 October, with three days remaining in the month.

The General Staff reported an average of about 1,750 Russian personnel losses per day in October so far.

Russian losses rise sharply in 2026

Ukraine’s General Staff reported 26,090 Russian personnel losses in February 2026, followed by 46,230 in September. By 29 October, the October figure had reached 49,040.

The figures indicate a sharp increase in reported Russian losses over the past several months.

Ukraine says losses exceed Russia’s ability to replenish units

The General Staff said the pace of Russian personnel losses exceeds Russia’s ability to replenish its military units. According to the Ukrainian military, the rising toll makes each month of the war increasingly costly for Moscow.

The figures refer to total personnel losses and do not distinguish between those killed and wounded. They are estimates published by Ukraine’s military and could not be independently verified.

Ukraine’s Defense Forces said they would continue inflicting losses on Russian forces until Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine ends.

Russia suffered vastly more casualties than Ukraine in September, a senior NATO military official told Bloomberg. Ukraine’s General Staff put the month’s Russian toll only slightly lower.

September’s toll lands on a recruitment system that was already falling short. Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) estimated that Russian losses outran new contracts in June and July, when monthly losses ran lower. In August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, citing military intelligence, warned that Russia is preparing a mass call-up after its parliamentary elections. That vote ended on 20 September.

Where the numbers come from

Russian casualties passed 50,000 in September, up to 28,000 of them killed, the official said. Ukraine’s losses over the same month came to about 5,000, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia does not release casualty figures, Bloomberg noted. In late August, Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office, put Russia’s July losses at 43,000 killed and wounded. Bloomberg could not confirm his figures.

To push forward, Russia keeps feeding troops into “kill zones,” the official said. These are stretches of ground saturated with armed drones, mines, and artillery fire. Maksym, call sign Rumyn, is a deputy company commander in the 46th Airmobile Brigade’s drone battalion. In April, he said the zone once ran 3–5 km deep and is now several times larger.

Rising stakes for Moscow

Russia’s defense spending is expected to near $199 billion this year, Bloomberg reported, citing two sources close to the government. That is about 40% above the plan the government set in late 2025.

Russian President Vladimir Putin would struggle to wind down the invasion without a political cost, Martin Jäger said last week. He heads Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Units of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces have killed or wounded more than 100,000 Russian troops since the start of 2026. That is more than 150,000 since the force was created on 11 June 2025, the force said on Telegram.

Drones have become the deadliest weapon of this war, accounting for about 96% of Russia’s battlefield casualties earlier this year. These hits are verified on video in the military’s Delta system, which is how the force counts only the losses its own pilots confirm.

“Behind these figures is the daily combat work of our soldiers, thousands of sorties, precise strikes, and the constant improvement of unmanned technologies,” Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said.

Each strike reduces Russia's combat potential and reflects the coordinated work of the force’s units, it added.

A toll that keeps climbing

Overall, drone branches of the Ukrainian Army had carried out more than 1 million verified strikes on enemy targets since January, killing or seriously wounding about 193,500 Russian troops, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported in July.

Those strikes roughly doubled over the first half of the year, from about 105,800 in January to more than 200,000 in June, the ministry noted.

Meanwhile, Commander of the separate Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces Robert “Madiar” Brovdi says the numbers are still growing. In the first five days of October, the force’s pilots killed or wounded 2,699 Russian soldiers, 39.7 percent more than in the same period of September.

He tied the rising number to Russia's assaults in Donbas, as the offensives for the fortress-belt cities that have been Ukraine's protection against full region's occupation since 2014, were ongoing.

Why the drone branch matters

The force fields are the cheap, fast weapons that now do most of the killing on the front. Interceptor and strike drones let Ukraine hit troops, logistics, and command posts while keeping its own soldiers farther from the fight.