Russia's soldier death toll since the country invaded Ukraine 15 months ago has been counted reportedly for the first time.
President Vladimir Putin's officials have constantly refused to release information on the losses suffered in battle.
And while many have been reporting figures provided by Ukraine's leadership as accurate, a new report from anti-Kremlin Russian media outlet Meduza details what appears to be the most accurate figures yet.
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The outlet teamed with journalists at Mediazone and Tubingen University to calculate that Russia has seen between 40,000 and 55,000 soldiers killed in battle.
It also calculates that around 70,000 men have been injured so badly in battle that they can not return to the front line.
The three organisations came to the figures by calculating reports from the Federal State Statistics Service, the National Probate Registry and published obituaries.
A spokesman said: “In 15 months of fighting (from February 24, 2022, to late May 2023), three times more Russian soldiers died in Ukraine than Soviet troops over 10 years of war in Afghanistan. “Nine times more soldiers were killed in Ukraine than in the first Russian-Chechen War between 1994 and 1996.
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“The numbers presented are remarkable not just because they signify the tens of thousands of men “Vladimir Putin has sent to die in a war of aggression but also because the authorities have laboured tirelessly to conceal the invasion’s true and growing costs to Russians themselves.”
The last official data released by Russia came on September 21, 2022 when officials claimed that only 5,937 soldiers had been killed in action.
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The numbers, however, could be even higher.
The spokesman added: “Another monitoring obstacle is that Russia has released a large number of prison inmates to fight in Ukraine, whose deaths are far likelier to go unreported online and in the news media.”
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