Russia's combat losses in the data of Rosstat

A data project uses Russia’s medical death-certificate records to examine combat deaths linked to the war against Ukraine. It counts death certificates rather than database entries, because each certificate can have multiple versions, and separates documented cases from estimates. Documented cases are identified through cause-of-death codes Y36 and Y89.1 or explicit wording about military action. A separate estimate comes from excess deaths among men whose records give no cause, compared with ordinary mortality in the same month and in frontline versus rear regions. The records include civilians killed in attacks as well as military personnel, and do not capture the wounded, missing, or foreign fighters whose deaths are absent from Russian registry data.

The project maps deaths by the deceased’s place of residence and, when recorded, place of death; it also breaks cases down by age, sex, year, and region and provides a search tool for certificate or act numbers and locations. Its central methodological warning is that official records arrive slowly: only about a quarter of certificates appear within a month, roughly two-thirds within six months, and nearly all after a year. Recent totals therefore understate deaths, while apparent declines by date of death can be misleading. Forecasts instead track when records enter the database and adjust for reporting delays, with the project describing this correction as a lower bound because registration has slowed.