Leaked Russian records record 11,335 foreign deaths in the war on Ukraine, Bloomberg reports
Leaked records from Russia's statistics agency Rosstat record the deaths of 11,335 people born outside Russia or holding foreign citizenship, from nearly 100 countries, in the war on Ukraine between February 2022 and late August 2026, Bloomberg reports after reviewing a cache of more than 11 million death certificates obtained by two hacker groups. The records cannot be verified entry by entry, Rosstat did not reply to Bloomberg about their content, and the agency says it found no evidence its databases were compromised. Journalists at Meduza and Mediazona say they are working to verify the data.
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Key points
- Bloomberg counted 11,335 foreign-born or foreign-citizen deaths in leaked Rosstat records, from nearly 100 countries, between February 2022 and late August 2026.
- The records cannot be verified entry by entry; Rosstat did not comment on their content and says it found no evidence of a leak — the figure is carried as reported, not confirmed.
- About 340 of the dead came from Africa, the largest groups from Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, on Bloomberg's reading of the data.
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- Meduza and Mediazona are working to verify the data; the BBC/Mediazona open-source count has verified 3,589 foreign deaths by name.
What happened
Russia does not publish how many foreigners it has recruited or how many have died. What is known has come in pieces: Ukraine's prisoner-of-war headquarters' recruitment figures, governments such as Nepal, India, Kenya and Ghana raising concerns about their citizens, and the BBC and Mediazona's name-by-name count of the dead. The leaked Rosstat cache is the first look inside Russia's own death registration — more than 11 million certificates, in which Bloomberg had already reported about 400,000 war-related deaths in total.
The foreign dead in the records follow Russia's recruitment waves: deaths from Nepal concentrated in 2023 and 2024, from Sri Lanka and China in 2024 and 2025, and from Colombia, Kenya and Nigeria from late 2025. Peru's foreign minister travelled to Moscow last week seeking answers over at least 430 Peruvians recruited into Russian forces, of whom Peru says 25 have died and more than 180 are missing.
What we know / what we don't know yet
What we know
- That Bloomberg reviewed the leaked Rosstat cache and counted 11,335 foreign-linked war deaths in it, with the composition and trend set out above.
- That Rosstat says it detected cyberattacks in late October and early November but found no evidence of a database compromise or leak, and did not comment to Bloomberg on the records' content.
- That Meduza and Mediazona hold the same data and are checking it for falsification and completeness.
What we don't know yet
- Whether the leaked records are authentic and complete — no independent verification of the dataset has been published.
- The true total of foreign deaths — the data itself is incomplete for 2026 and excludes, among others, any North Korean deaths.
- How many foreigners are currently serving in Russia's forces — the only figures in the reporting are Ukraine's.
Claim by claim
Show all claims (6)
Why this label: The figure is Bloomberg's count in leaked records. It cannot be independently verified entry by entry, Rosstat did not reply to Bloomberg's request for comment on the content, and the agency says it found no evidence of a leak. The count is therefore carried as reported from the leaked data, never as an official or confirmed toll.
On the ladder: the evidence so far sits low — early, single or social sources. We publish the claim as a claim, never as fact.
Why this label: The composition comes from the same leaked records and carries the same limit: it is what the records show as Bloomberg read them, including who the records count as foreign — some of those counted may be Russian by birth to families living abroad.
On the ladder: the evidence so far sits low — early, single or social sources. We publish the claim as a claim, never as fact.
Why this label: The trend and the gaps are Bloomberg's own reading of the leaked data and its stated caveats. Missing, unidentified and later-registered deaths are among the reasons the analysis itself gives for the understatement.
On the ladder: the evidence so far sits low — early, single or social sources. We publish the claim as a claim, never as fact.
Why this label: Both statements are on the record and reported by Bloomberg and Meduza: the hacker groups' claim of a breach, and the agency's statement that it detected attacks but found no evidence of a compromise or a leak. Whether the data is authentic is the separate, unsettled question above.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
Why this label: Meduza states its own verification work in its report of the Bloomberg findings. The BBC/Mediazona figure is their verified-by-name open-source count — a different, lower method than a register of death certificates, and the gap between the two is part of what the verification work has to explain.
On the ladder: a claim earns Verified from primary evidence, or from two independent sources that do not copy each other.
Why this label: The recruitment figures are a Ukrainian official's, reported by Bloomberg. They are one side's figures for a programme Moscow does not publish numbers for, and no Russian figure exists in the reporting read to set against them.
On the ladder: the evidence so far sits low — early, single or social sources. We publish the claim as a claim, never as fact.
Why it matters
If the leaked register is genuine, Russia's war is being sustained in part by men from nearly 100 countries — including hundreds from Africa — whose deaths Moscow has never acknowledged. The figure's source is also its weakness: it rests on hacked data that one side's hackers supplied and Russia's own agency will not confirm, which is why it is published here as a reported count under active verification, not as a settled toll.
Background
Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow say they breached Rosstat's systems and extracted some 23 terabytes of data; Rosstat says it detected targeted attacks but found no evidence of a compromise.
Bloomberg publishes its analysis of the leaked death records, including 11,335 foreign-linked deaths; Meduza and Mediazona begin their own verification of the same data.
Update history
No silent edits. Every change is written here, with its time.
- Latest
Published in Checking state — the 11,335 figure is Bloomberg's count in leaked records that journalists are still verifying, and Russia's statistics agency has not confirmed the data.