Hacker groups Belarusian Cyberpartisans and Silent Crow claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) on Nov. 7. They said leaked death records indicate between 394,000 and 450,000 people fighting on Russia’s side or otherwise linked to the war have died since the full-scale invasion began. The groups stated they obtained these records from Rosstat’s internal Demography database, which contains information from death certificates registered between February 2022 and August 2026. This specific timeframe covers the entire duration of the conflict up to the recent months. The data reportedly includes explicit causes of death as well as unspecified entries.
Methodology and Estimates
Belarusian Cyberpartisans estimated at least 393,881 deaths based strictly on records explicitly identifying military operations as the cause. In contrast, Silent Crow published a higher estimate of up to 450,100 deaths using a broader methodology that included non-combat deaths of military personnel and certain deaths recorded without a specified cause. The hackers reported gaining access to Rosstat’s network approximately six months before launching the attack, systematically collecting internal documents before targeting the agency’s IT infrastructure overnight on Oct. 31 – Nov. 1. Rosstat acknowledged its systems were targeted between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1 but denied that databases had been compromised or information leaked. The agency later reported disruptions to some services and extended deadlines for submitting statistical data.
Context and Verification
According to estimates from the Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState, Russia has gained control of approximately 73,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory since February 2022. Comparing that figure with Silent Crow’s estimate amounts to roughly six deaths for every square kilometer seized, although the hackers’ casualty figures have not been independently verified. Independent Russian outlet Mediazona, working with BBC Russian and volunteers, identified 285,881 Russian military personnel killed through open-source research as of Nov. 6. These journalists stressed their verified count is incomplete and that the actual death toll is considerably higher. The Kyiv Independent could not immediately verify the authenticity of the leaked records or the groups’ casualty estimates.
