One in Five Has Died. And the Count Is Not Over Yet.

One in five has died. And the count is not over yet.

In April, we published a named list of 5,006 members of the special contingent - convicts, people under investigation, and defendants whom the Russian Defense Ministry recruited for the war in just one winter month of 2026.

Mediazona checked this list against state registries and the inheritance case database. The results speak for themselves.

As of January 1, 2026, almost all of these people were alive.

After that, the number of confirmed deaths only kept rising:

▪️April 26 - 118 dead confirmed;

▪️May 20 - already 198;

▪️about a month later - 352;

▪️September 10 - already 807 dead.

That means one in five of the 4,000 recruited men has already died.

The most telling part is when exactly they died.

Of the 807 confirmed deaths, 682 people (84.5%) died in the first three months of 2026:

▪️January - 81;

▪️February - 316;

▪️March - 285.

The period from May through August accounts for only 125 dead (15.5%).

And this is a very important detail.

In Mediazona's database, compiled from obituaries and public reports, only 112 of these 807 people are present as of today. In other words, only every seventh death became public.

This means that official registration of death appears much earlier than obituaries and relatives' posts. That means the number of identified dead for January-March will continue to grow as new data emerges.

Put simply: Mediazona's check already shows that at least 20% of prisoners and criminal-case defendants recruited by the Russian Defense Ministry died in the first months after being sent to the front. And this is not the final figure, but only the minimum that has been confirmed as of today.

This is what everyone who thinks they can game the system and get out of prison or avoid serving a sentence by signing a contract needs to remember. That will not happen; you will simply die.

➡️ Save your life and surrender: t.me/kak\sdatsya\bot

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Russia's Losses in the War. We Show How the State Counts the Dead | September 11 Briefing

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As of September 11, 2026, our list contains 248,844 confirmed dead. Since August 28, this…