“At least 400,000 casualties in Ukraine War according to hacked data from the Russian National Statistical Office”

New circumstances have emerged showing that more than 400,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the war with Ukraine.

This figure was calculated based on data from the National Statistical Office, which showed that the Russian government was hacking while hiding the actual scale of the attack, conscious of the negative impact it would have on public opinion and the conduct of the war.

Bloomberg News reported on the 9th (local time) that it had obtained hacking information on the Russian Federal Statistics Office from the Belarusian anti-government hacker group 'Cyberpartisans BY' and the Ukrainian hacker group 'Silent Crow'.

Through cyber attacks, hacker groups confirmed that about 392,700 death certificates from the Russian Federal Statistical Office from February 24, 2022, the date of the outbreak of the war, to the end of August this year were explicitly related to the war.

Hacker groups infiltrated the National Statistical Office's internal system on the 1st of this month and stole 23 terabytes (TB) worth of information, including the number of Russian military deaths, and then selected codes related to war deaths, such as 'military operations', 'shelling', and 'drones'.

The news agency estimated that the number of approximately 400,000 people may be lower than the actual number, considering the difficulty in accurately confirming the number of war dead due to disappearances or injuries-related deaths.

The Russian Federal Statistical Office announced that it suffered a cyber attack from the 29th of last month to the 1st of this month, but no information leaks were confirmed.

Russia and Ukraine have regularly released estimates of casualties in each other's countries, but have not disclosed in detail the scale of casualties among their own citizens.

Anne Kist-Butler, director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency, said in her inauguration speech last May that it is estimated that about 500,000 troops have been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed since the start of the war in February was about 51,000.

As the conflict between the two countries has intensified in a stalemate on the front line this year, the number of Russian casualties has increased significantly compared to the beginning of the war.

Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies estimated that 54,000 Russian soldiers were killed or injured in October.

Recently, in a situation where the front lines are deadlocked, Russia has been strengthening its airstrikes against major Ukrainian cities and infrastructure such as power plants.

At the same time, they are demanding that the United States put pressure on Ukraine to give up more territory to end the war.

Russia's stance is that it will continue to use military force until it secures the entire eastern Donbass (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) of Ukraine, but Ukraine is fighting back, saying it cannot give up its territory.

End-of-war negotiations between the two sides, mediated by the United States, will be held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the 10th to 11th. It is unclear whether a breakthrough will be achieved due to the large differences of opinion over territorial cession and security guarantees from the West, including the United States, to Ukraine.