The number of Russian soldiers killed in the last 12 months (past year) of the war has increased by 25% compared to the first year after the start of the war. The independent media group ‘MediaZona’ and volunteer war monitors have been counting the number of casualties in the war between Russia and Ukraine since February 2022. New graves in Russian cemeteries have also helped to identify the names of recently killed Russian military personnel. 

It has looked at open-source information, and official and social media reports to get an accurate estimate of the number of Russian soldiers killed. Our research shows that 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Our research shows that 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. 

The number of deaths revealed by the investigation is eight times higher than the official figures released by Russia. Our research did not include the deaths of members of pro-Russian armed groups fighting in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk, which, if included, would have seen a large increase in Russian casualties in the war. 

Ukraine, on the other hand, rarely comments on the deaths of its soldiers. In February of this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 31,000 of his soldiers had been killed in the war with Russia. 

What is Russia’s ‘Meat Grinder’ War Policy?

The term ‘meat grinder’ is used to describe the new policy of the Russian military. Under this war policy, large numbers of Russian military personnel are sent to the front line so that Ukrainian soldiers can come forward to confront them and the Russian military can know the location of their shelters. (In simple terms, Russian soldiers are being used as bait.)

 Information about the deaths of Russian military personnel obtained by MediaZona shows that Russia has suffered heavy casualties due to the change in war policy. The graph pasted below shows that since January 2023, since the start of the military operation in Donetsk, the Russian army has suffered heavy casualties. 

This was the time when the Wagner group was also participating in the war against Ukraine along with the Russian army. The head of the Wagner Group, Eugenie Prigozhin, said at the time that 22,000 of his fighters had died in this war. The Russian army also suffered heavy casualties during the occupation of the city of Ivodiuka in eastern Ukraine. 

Wagner Group v. Ministry of Defence

The success of the ‘Meat Grinder’ policy depends on prisoners of war being recruited from Russian prisons, and research has shown that a large number of military personnel killed on the front lines of the war are such prisoners. In June 2022, Russia allowed Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin to recruit prisoners from prisons for the Ukraine war. After that, these prisoners were fighting in Ukraine as part of a private group on the Emma of Russia. 

Direct transfer of prisoners to the front lines

 Prisoners recruited from prisons under the Wagner group were given military training before being sent to the war front. On the contrary, we learn that the Russian Ministry of Defense sent some prisoners to the war front only two weeks after the agreement was signed. According to Grobank, when Russian military commanders discovered that some of the guns were completely broken, they said it was impossible to replace them.