The Goryushko project, analyzing posts by relatives of the Russian soldiers on social media and obituaries in the media, confirmed the deaths of 100,000 Russian soldiers as of February 24, 2025.

The project announced this on its Telegram channel.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, volunteers of the Goryushko project have been tracking data on the deaths of Russian soldiers, systematizing reports from Russian officials and the media. They also collect reports from relatives and colleagues of the victims with photos of the graves.

The volunteers explained they are tracking only active servicemen of the Russian troops who died in the occupied territories of Ukraine. They are also taking into account servicemen who died from the actions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the territory of the Russian Federation, and members of the Wagner PMC with a Russian passport.

The database does not include Ukrainian citizens mobilized in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, soldiers of the 1st Donetsk Army Corps and the 2nd Luhansk Army Corps. Anyone, who died not on the front line or due to injuries in the rear, as well as foreign mercenaries, are not included to the Project’s list.

The 100,000th post was dedicated to Alexey Burkov, the Russian from the village of Sosnovskoye, Kirov oblast, who died in mid-December 2024.

Estimating the real number of losses

However, the actual losses of the Russian army in the Russian-Ukrainian war are much higher, as not all reports of Russian military deaths are published in open sources.

For example, in July 2024, journalists from Mediasona, the BBC Russian Service, and a team of volunteers conducted a study comparing the number of known obituaries and data from the Register of Inheritance Cases, which was used to create methods for estimating the actual number of deaths.

As of February 21, 2025, journalists managed to find 95,026 obituaries of Russian citizens who died in the war. However, using the developed methodology, the publications estimate the true loss of life in the range of 146 to 221 thousand. In addition, according to their estimates, 21,000 to 23,500 members of the military units of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic were killed.

Missing Russian soldiers

The initiative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War “I Want to Find” has received more than 60,000 requests for missing Russian soldiers who fought against Ukraine as of early February 2025.

Of these, more than 8,500 applications were received in January 2025, compared to 22% fewer in December 2024.

As the Coordination Headquarters points out, this number does not include the dead occupiers and, according to their estimates, is about 2-3 times less than the total number of missing Russian soldiers.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as of early February, Russia had lost about 350,000 soldiers killed.