Confidential statistics obtained through a cyberattack reveal that 11,335 foreign nationals died fighting in the war against Ukraine between February 2022 and late August 2026.
Internal figures from Rosstat outline a vast recruitment network spanning nearly 100 countries. The leaked database, analyzed by Bloomberg following its transfer by hackers from Cyber Partisans and Silent Crow, provides concrete documentation of fatalities tied directly to combat codes and military descriptors in death certificates.
Surge in Foreign Casualties
The scale of foreign deaths expanded dramatically as the conflict wore on. According to Rosstat records, fatalities among foreign recruits grew more than eightfold from roughly 630 deaths in 2022 to over 5,500 in 2025.
Approximately 3,700 of the deceased were Ukrainian citizens or individuals born on Ukrainian soil after independence, with the majority residing on occupied territories in the south and east. An estimated 80 percent of the remaining foreign dead came from other former Soviet states, while more than 6,000 individuals held Russian citizenship at the time of death despite being born abroad.
Among the records, approximately 300 entries involved Russian citizens born in Germany prior to 1992, predominantly within former East German garrison towns such as Potsdam and Magdeburg where Soviet forces were stationed until 1994. Males constituted 99 percent of all deceased foreign military personnel, while 154 of the 159 recorded female deaths originated from temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
Shifting Recruitment Waves
The data indicates that recruitment shifted across different regions over time. High fatalities appeared among Nepalese citizens in 2023 and 2024, followed by citizens of Sri Lanka and China in 2024 and 2025. Additional documentation lists 44 deceased citizens of Nepal, 20 from Bangladesh, and 10 from India, alongside 98 fatalities from Colombia as the leader among Latin American nations.
By late 2025, deaths began appearing among individuals from Colombia, Kenya, and Nigeria. Roughly 340 of the dead originated from African nations, with prominent representation from Egypt, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana.
