Russian independent media outlet Mediazona said it had, in collaboration with the BBC, identified 95,000 dead Russian soldiers through open-source data, releasing an account that was neither commented on nor denied by the Kremlin today.

A new detailed information chart released yesterday, Monday, to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces, identifies tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, giving their names, date of birth, date of death, unit, and place of origin.

Their identifying information, often accompanied by a photograph, was compiled on a website (https://200.zone.media/) to form a reproduction of the painting “The Apotheosis of War”, a work by the Russian painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, which depicts a pyramid of human skulls. This painting is on display at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

The site allows the dead to be classified by place of origin, military rank and unit, or even search for a specific person.

Mediazona, which was founded by Pyotr Verzilov, a Russian opposition figure who fought on the Ukrainian side and is co-founder of the Russian anti-Putin group Pussy Riot, stressed that this account is not exhaustive, estimating that some 165,000 Russian servicemen may have been killed in three years.

Mediazona is working on this project with the BBC’s Russian service and regularly publishes an updated account as the dead are identified.

Asked by AFP in a routine telephone briefing for journalists, the Kremlin spokesman would not comment on this investigative work and the human toll resulting from it, saying he was not aware of it. However, he did not deny it either.

“I don’t know what this publication is, and whether what it published is true or not,” Dmitry Peskov said.

“Any information about casualties during the special military operation (ed: as Russia calls the Russian attack on Ukraine) can only be provided by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. This is an exclusive prerogative of the ministry,” he added.

The Defense Ministry has not published an account since the fall of 2022 when it admitted to the deaths of at least 6,000 soldiers.

In late 2024, then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reported that some 700,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded.

On the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelensky had announced in mid-February that some 46,000 soldiers had been killed and 380,000 others wounded.

Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Butusov, an independent journalist, had at the same time said in December 2024 that his sources within the army had counted 70,000 dead and 35,000 missing.