Meduza exposes data distortions behind Russia casualty tallies in Ukraine war
Meduza argues that the widely cited figure of Russia losing 50,000 soldiers per month is likely a data artifact caused by counting wounded as dead and by a new process that retroactively declares missing soldiers dead to collect benefits. After adjusting for these distortions and for improved data coverage, current irreversible losses appear to be about 27,000 per month (roughly 900 per day), with the 2025 spike driven largely by data artifacts rather than battlefield gains. This challenges Western casualty models that rely on historical multipliers to project current losses.
