Russia's military death toll in Ukraine has now passed the 50,000 mark, the BBC can confirm.
In the second 12 months on the front line - as Moscow pushed its so-called meat grinder strategy - we found the body count was nearly 25% higher than in the first year.
BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers have been counting deaths since February 2022.
New graves in cemeteries helped provide the names of many soldiers.
Our teams also combed through open-source information from official reports, newspapers and social media.
More than 27,300 Russian soldiers died in the second year of combat - according to our findings - a reflection of how territorial gains have come at a huge human cost.
Russia has declined to comment.
The term meat grinder has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery.
The overall death toll - of more than 50,000 - is eight times higher than the only official public acknowledgement of fatality numbers ever given by Moscow in September 2022.
The actual number of Russian deaths is likely to be much higher.
Our analysis does not include the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk - in eastern Ukraine. If they were added, the death toll on the Russian side would be even higher.
Ukraine, meanwhile, rarely comments on the scale of its battlefield fatalities. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed - but estimates, based on US intelligence, suggest greater losses.
Former prisoners have also described the high price paid by their comrades.
"If you sign up now, be ready to die, mate," says Sergei, in an online forum for Storm fighters and their relatives, where information is shared.
He claims to be a former inmate who has been fighting in a Storm unit since October.
Another forum member says he joined a Storm platoon of 100 soldiers five months ago and is now one of just 38 still alive.
"Every combat mission is like being born again."
@OpulentElandDemocrat2wks2W
I think you made a mistake, the last count was more than 400,000.
@MereLemurDemocrat2wks2W
The 400k includes those lost for the military, including the severly wounded, afaik.
Also, the 50k are only the confirmed deaths, so the real number is of course multiple times higher.
@ChamoisBenPatriot2wks2W
400k is "casualties" — dead AND wounded.
These 50k are people who have been identified and confirmed dead, one by one.
@SelfishCockatooGreen2wks2W
When we give money to Ukraine (who has ZERO chance of winning) this is what we're doing. We are prolonging carnage and human suffering. If you support that, you have to ask yourself why. Why do you want to make a hopeless foreign war seven thousand miles away longer, when that means more deaths and horrific casualties?
That's way more than I would have guessed. Consider that the US lost about 7,000 troops during the entirety of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those conflicts spanned the better part of a decade. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has only lasted a bit over 2 years.
@DearMackerelGreen2wks2W
Ukrainian losses are well over 500,000 include civilians we are talking way over 1 million for both Russia and Ukraine.
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