WARSAW, Poland (AFP) — The BBC and the independent Russian news site Mediazona said on Friday they had documented the deaths of around 70,000 Russian soldiers since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The toll comes from publicly available information such as official statements, death notices in the media and announcements on social media, as well as tombstones in Russian cemeteries.

“We have identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher,” the BBC said.

“Some families do not share details of their relatives’ deaths publicly — and our analysis does not include names we were unable to check, or the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine,” the British broadcaster added.

The same two organisations had put the toll at 66,000 in mid-August.

Mediazona and another independent Russian news site, Meduza, have also analysed official data from notaries on inheritance cases.

This has led them to estimate that the military death toll could be much higher — at 120,000.

The toll is considered secret in Russia.

Ukraine also communicates very little about losses for fear of demoralising its citizens after more than two and a half years of Russia’s invasion.

In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said around 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died, although analysts and observers have said they believe the real number to be much higher.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the war had killed or injured a total of one million soldiers on both sides.

“A confidential Ukrainian estimate from earlier this year put the number of dead Ukrainian troops at 80,000 and the wounded at 400,000, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Western intelligence estimates of Russian casualties vary, with some putting the number of dead as high as nearly 200,000 and wounded at around 400,000,” it said.