Russia has lost as many as 1,820 soldiers in Ukraine in the past two weeks, the largest number of casualties recorded within that time span since the beginning of its invasion, the BBC Russian service reported Friday citing data it collected in tandem with independent Russian news outlet Mediazona.
The total number of Russian troops killed in Ukraine that researchers have been able to verify has reached 20,451. Non-professional soldiers, including volunteers, mercenaries and those drafted as part of the countrywide mobilization drive, comprise a third of that number.
The losses of Russian prisoners recruited by the Wagner Group continues to far outstrip losses from among all other groups — a trend that’s been observed by the BBC and Mediazona researchers since March.
However, according to researchers, and based on the rapidly growing number of graves appearing in cemeteries across the country, the Russian military’s true death toll in Ukraine is likely to stand at over 41,000 people.
The total number of Russia’s casualties, which includes missing persons and the wounded, is likely over 184,000, according to observations by the U.S. Center for Naval Analysis, which for each confirmed death, calculates that another three and a half soldiers were wounded.
Russia’s southern Krasnodar region has the largest number of confirmed casualties, closely followed by the Sverdlovsk region in the Ural mountains.