The Rossiya 24 TV channel aired an interview with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. For the first time since March, he disclosed casualty figures: according to him, 5,937 military personnel were killed during the invasion of Ukraine.
This number is less than the dead count maintained by Mediazona, the BBC Russian Service and a team of volunteers. By the beginning of September, we knew the names of 6,219 dead, and by today their number has exceeded 6.6 thousand.
Mediazona keeps its count based on public reports of a person's death — posts on social networks from relatives, memorial plaques in schools, messages from local authorities, and so on. Such an assessment can be called minimal — far from every death becomes publicly known.
Russia's losses in the war with Ukraine. Summary of «Mediazona»
In the same speech, Shoigu said that the losses of the Ukrainian army were more than 100 thousand people, of which 60 thousand were killed.