A breach of Russia’s national statistics agency has reportedly exposed evidence that almost 400,000 Russians have died in the war in Ukraine since the invasion began in 2022.
The material was obtained by Cyber Partisans, a Belarusian pro-opposition hacking collective, and Silent Crow, a Ukrainian cyber operation. Both groups said they accessed files belonging to Rosstat, Russia’s federal statistics service.
Their analysis indicates that the conflict has become Russia’s fourth-leading cause of death during the past four years.
Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow, which are both banned in Russia as “extremist organisations”, said the stolen files covered the country’s economy, population data and military casualties.
The groups said more than 392,700 death certificates issued between February 2022 and the end of August 2026 contained an explicit reference to the war.
The documents reportedly used phrases including “military operation”, “shelling” and “drones”, either in official classification codes or handwritten notes.
The figure includes military personnel killed in combat, as well as civilians who died in airstrikes and during Ukraine’s 2024 incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
The true death toll is likely higher. The records do not include troops listed as missing in action or an estimated 27,000 foreign fighters believed to have joined Russia’s armed forces.
The data indicates that Russia’s ethnic republics have borne a disproportionate share of mobilisation and military recruitment
The files also show that not every recorded death occurred in battle. More than 14,000 cases involved soldiers who died from causes such as illness, traffic collisions or suicide.
A further 32,000 people reportedly died from injuries suffered at least 12 months earlier.
Janis Kluge, who leads the Russia and Eurasia division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, described the material to The Moscow Times as the most important leak yet concerning Russian wartime losses.
“It is clear that the war has never been more deadly than it is now,” he said.
If verified, the figures would make the Ukraine war Russia’s deadliest conflict since the Second World War.
The leaked records suggest that Russia’s ethnic republics have been hit especially hard by mobilisation and recruitment drives.
By contrast, large urban centres including Moscow appear to have suffered a much smaller proportion of casualties when measured against their populations.
Researcher Maria Vyushkova said the Kremlin’s recruitment strategy had effectively amounted to the “extermination of entire nations” in the case of some of Russia’s smallest ethnic communities.
The data adds weight to earlier reports that men from poorer minority regions were drawn into the military with the promise of substantial wages and extensive benefits.
The revelations emerged as the fighting continued, with Russia launching another assault on Ukraine’s power infrastructure while Ukrainian forces struck one of Russia’s largest oil refineries.
The attacks came only hours before Russian and Ukrainian delegations were scheduled to begin fresh US-mediated negotiations aimed at ending the war.
Almost five years after Russia invaded its neighbour, the two sides remain locked in a conflict with neither appearing willing to abandon its core demands.
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US President Donald Trump told the CBS programme 60 Minutes, in an interview broadcast on Sunday, that Moscow and Kyiv were “very close” to reaching an agreement, despite the “tremendous hatred” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump said Ukraine would have “a little bit different shape” under any settlement, but offered no further explanation.
The president has previously made predictions about the course of the war that failed to come to pass.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday that its forces had struck four electricity substations in the Ukrainian regions of Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Vinnytsia. The attacks form part of Moscow’s campaign to disrupt heating, electricity and water supplies ahead of winter.
Zelensky said the European Union had agreed to trigger a special emergency mechanism designed to speed up financial assistance for repairs to Ukraine’s power network.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 317 drones overnight, including 105 jet-powered models.
Heavy smoke rises from a civilian industrial site after a double Russian drone strike in Dnipro
Relatives mourn beside the coffins of Ukrainian police officers killed when a Russian airstrike destroyed an underground school
Russian air raids have repeatedly devastated Ukrainian cities and frontline areas throughout the conflict. Last week, a glide-bomb strike near the front in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed at least 55 people at a centre distributing aid.
At the same time, Ukrainian long-range drones set fire to the KINEF oil refinery, one of Russia’s biggest, near St Petersburg and more than 1,200km (745 miles) from the Ukrainian border, according to Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko.
Ukraine said in early October that its long-range attacks had disabled more than half of Russia’s oil-refining capacity, putting additional pressure on Moscow’s ability to fuel its war effort.
The previous three-way negotiations, held in Geneva in February, also took place while attacks continued.
Those discussions produced no major breakthrough, although the wider political circumstances have since shifted.
Trump, whose position on the war has changed repeatedly, must also contend with Democrats taking control of Congress in January after the US midterm elections. They could push Washington to provide greater backing for Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia’s finances are under mounting pressure from the cost of the war, while Ukraine’s economy continues to suffer from sustained Russian strikes.
The planned two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, beginning on Tuesday, is expected to examine what security guarantees could satisfy Russia, which views Nato as a threat, and Ukraine, which wants protection against another invasion.
Putin has attempted to exclude European governments from the process and deal directly with Trump over Ukraine’s future.
Moscow has said European officials will not take part in the Abu Dhabi talks. However, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Sunday that France and other European representatives would be present in the United Arab Emirates.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that the meeting would centre on trilateral negotiations, with the United States acting as mediator between Russia and Ukraine.
“You know that the Americans have their own lines of communication with the Europeans, just as the Ukrainians do, and it appears they are already developing their own system of coordination,” Peskov said.
“But, once again, this concerns trilateral negotiations.”