Leaked Russian death records place 248,686 Russian war deaths in Donetsk oblast, with Pokrovsk raion alone accounting for 127,931, including 44,951 in the Pokrovsk community. Of those deaths in Pokrovsk, 36,525 were recorded in 2025 alone, the year Russia drove its main offensive there.
The Geography of the Toll
An analysis of 438,228 wartime death records in Russia's Rosstat register matched the listed places of death to settlements. Of those records, 389,719, or 89%, name a place in Ukraine or in Russia's Kursk, Belgorod or Bryansk oblasts. Another 10,007 list other Russian regions, predominantly where soldiers died in hospitals. No place of death is listed in 36,485 records.
Donetsk accounts for roughly 64% of the deaths mapped to Ukraine and the border regions. Within Pokrovsk raion, the Pokrovsk hromada's toll stands far above any other hromada. The deaths are entries in Russia's own death register, concentrated where Moscow kept sending men into its offensives.
The next highest hromada totals are Ocheretyne at 15,982, Velyka Novosilka at 15,608, Hrodivka at 15,081 and Bakhmut at 14,167. At settlement level, the records place 8,757 deaths in Avdiivka, 7,937 in Kreminna, 6,244 in Robotyne, 6,120 in the village of Makiivka near Kreminna, 5,552 in Klishchiivka and 5,307 in Bakhmut.
The Offensives, Year by Year
The highest annual concentrations move with Russia's main attacks:
- 2023: Bakhmut hromada, 6,336; Marinka, 2,905.
- 2024: Ocheretyne, 11,141; Marinka, 7,435; Avdiivka, 6,484.
- 2025: Velyka Novosilka, 11,164; Hrodivka, 9,360.
- January through August 2026: Pokrovsk, 4,266; Huliaipole, 3,846; Lyman, 2,433.
The changing concentrations mark the places where Russia chose to sustain its assaults, and the immense human cost of those choices.
The map also extends across the border. Kursk oblast accounts for 19,476 recorded deaths, including 12,479 in Sudzhanskyi raion. Belgorod and Bryansk are included in the mapped total, though the analysis gives no separate totals for them.
