The 864th day of Russian aggression against Ukraine is underway. On the website wPolitce.pl we report on the events on the front for you.

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Saturday, July 6, 2024

00:01. Media: about 120,000 people have died since the beginning of the war. Russian soldiers

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, about 120,000 people have been killed. Russian soldiers, according to experts from the Mediazona, Meduza and Russian-language BBC channels. Every day, 200-250 soldiers die on the front lines. The calculation based on open sources and heritage lists was published on Friday.

According to open sources, the deaths of 56,585 soldiers have been confirmed.

The main sources of this information are obituaries published by local authorities, schools or relatives of the deceased on social networking sites, farewell announcements, and photographs from the burial site.

– said the author of the report.

To make the list as accurate as possible, strict criteria were set: “clear evidence is required that we are talking about a Russian military man and that the death is related to the war,” the portal notes. The list includes only Russian citizens. There are no Ukrainian citizens from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions who fought on the Russian side, and there are no foreigners recruited by Moscow.

But analysts warn that this figure only covers a fraction of the death toll. In their opinion, the real death toll is shown by data collected from the Russian register of inheritance cases. The register records the initiation of inheritance cases, which lets potential heirs know that they can file claims for the deceased’s estate. Such cases – the portal emphasizes – are not open to all deceased people, but it is impossible to inherit real estate, for example, in a different way. Although the percentage of deceased people whose information is included in the register depends on their age and economic status, in general inheritance cases account for more than 70% of all deaths in Russia.

The researchers used a complex mathematical analysis, taking into account, among other things: the possibility of opening inheritance cases for people of different age groups or for people who fought in different formations (such as recruited prisoners) or the ratio of the number of cases initiated for men and women. As a result, analysts were able to estimate the excess mortality rate of Russian men. According to them, last year the death rate of young men in Russia was almost twice as high as in 2022. Then the number of those killed increased: in the last three months of 2023, analysts estimated the daily losses of the Russian army at about 120 people, currently – at 200-250 people daily.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine publishes official death toll figures, so different centers use different methods to estimate losses on each side.

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