6 people died every kilometer advanced! Hackers seize Russian secrets: More than 450,000 Russian soldiers and civilians died, rising to the fourth leading cause of death, and border minorities became cannon fodder

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches five years, the true bloody cost and chaos on the frontline are gradually coming to light. Confidential information from the Russian Federal Statistical Service (Rosstat) recently obtained by Belarusian and Ukrainian hacker groups shows that more than 450,000 Russian soldiers and civilians died in the war. This battle not only became the deadliest armed conflict in Russia since World War II, but also jumped to the fourth leading cause of death in official statistics.

Hacker groups such as the Belarusian Cyber ​​Partisans and the Ukrainian Silent Crow hacked into the Russian Federal Statistical Service and stole up to 23 TB of internal population data. Leaked 11 million death certificates show that from the start of the war in 2022 to August 2026, more than 450,000 Russian soldiers and civilians have died in the war, including civilians who died in the Ukrainian army's "Operation Kusk" in 2024.

Janis Kluge, an expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), pointed out that data shows that the Russian army sacrifices an average of 6.2 lives for every kilometer it advances. Up to 72% of these death cases are concentrated in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, highlighting the brutality of the offensive and defensive battles in local areas such as Bakhmut.

In addition to the death data leaked by hackers, the latest battle report from the Ukrainian Armed Forces Staff Headquarters on November 9 pointed out that the total number of Russian military casualties has exceeded the 1.6 million mark, reaching 1.6 million 9,380 people. The Ukrainian army confirmed that October 2026 was the deadliest month since the Russian army began the war; in the past 24 hours alone, the Russian army suffered a surge of nearly 3,000 casualties and lost more than 12,000 tanks and 52,000 artillery pieces.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank, estimates that the casualty ratio between Russia and Ukraine is about 2.5 to 1 or 2 to 1. The total casualties of the Ukrainian army by the end of 2025 will be between 500,000 and 600,000, with about 100,000 to 140,000 killed. However, due to intensive Russian drone bombings, Ukraine is facing great obstacles in recovering and repatriating the remains of fallen soldiers for DNA verification.

The data obtained by the hackers profoundly reflects the plight of Russia's depleted military resources. The young army at the beginning of the invasion was now forced to be filled by the elderly. In the first half of 2022, there were only 146 war deaths among men aged 50 to 59, but by the first half of 2025, the number of combat deaths in this age group surged to more than 12,000.

In addition, this brutal war of attrition also exposed the injustices of Russian society. The Moscow authorities used high salaries to induce people from poor areas to join the army. As a result, ethnic minorities on Russia's borders, such as the republics of Buryatia and Tuva, which are close to Mongolia, suffered disproportionately heavy sacrifices. Some small indigenous peoples even faced a blow that amounted to "genocide." Large cities such as Moscow were protected to a certain extent.