Counting Russia’s 47,000 killed combatants

How many Russians have been killed in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine? If you visited Meduza’s website this week, you’ll know that we ran the numbers and estimate the total death toll among Russian combatants to be 47,000 men. That’s three times more than all the Soviet troops who died over 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan, and it’s nine times more than how many Russian soldiers were killed in the first Russian-Chechen War in the mid-1990s.

To discuss the methodology, insights, and obstacles behind this joint investigation, The Naked Pravda spoke to one of the report’s authors.

Timestamps for this episode:

• (4:34) An author’s reaction to readers’ reactions to the story
• (6:53) Modeling the demographic differences between combatants
• (9:51) Estimating Russia’s unclaimed bodies
• (12:53) How the 47,000-man death toll fits into the larger narrative about Russian combat deaths
• (15:54) Confidence levels with this analysis
• (18:01) The geographic angle in probate records

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