More than 70,000 people who fought in the Russian army have now died in Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the BBC.

And for the first time, volunteers – civilians who joined the armed forces after the war began – account for the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia’s large-scale invasion in 2022.

Every day, the names of those killed in Ukraine, their obituaries and photos of their funerals are published in the media and social networks throughout Russia.

BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have compiled these names along with names from other open sources, including official reports.

We checked whether the information was passed on by the authorities or the relatives of the deceased – and whether they were identified as those who died in the war.

New graves in cemeteries also help to make the names of soldiers killed in Ukraine known. These are usually marked with flags and wreaths sent by the Ministry of Defense.

We identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, but the true number is likely much higher. Some families do not publicly disclose details of their loved ones’ deaths – and our analysis does not include names we could not verify, nor does it include militia deaths in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

13,781 of them were volunteers, or about 20 percent. The number of deaths among volunteers now exceeds that of other categories. In the past, they were former prisoners who joined the fighting in return for a pardon for their crimes. Today, they account for 19 percent of all confirmed deaths. Mobilized soldiers, i.e. citizens who were called up to fight, account for 13 percent.

Since October last year, the number of volunteer deaths per week has not fallen below 100 – and in some weeks we have recorded more than 310 volunteer deaths.

As for Ukraine, it rarely comments on the scale of battlefield losses. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, but US intelligence estimates suggest even higher losses.

Rinat Khusniyarov’s story is typical of many of the fallen volunteer soldiers. He was from Ufa in Bashkortostan and had two jobs to make ends meet – at a tram depot and at a plywood factory. He was 62 years old when he signed his contract with the Russian army in November last year.

He survived the fighting for less than three months and was killed on February 27. His obituary on a local online memorial website described him simply as a “hard-working, decent man.”

According to the data we analyzed, most of the men registering come from small towns in parts of Russia where it is difficult to find stable, well-paid work.

Most of them appear to have joined voluntarily, although some in the Chechen Republic have reported coercion and threats to human rights activists and lawyers.

Some of the volunteers said they did not understand that the contracts they signed had no end date. They have since reached out to pro-Kremlin journalists, asking them to help them end their service, to no avail.

Military salaries can be five to seven times higher than average salaries in less affluent parts of the country. Soldiers also receive social benefits such as free childcare and tax breaks. Lump sum payments for conscripts have also become increasingly higher in many parts of Russia.

Most of the volunteers who died at the front were between 42 and 50 years old. They make up 4,100 men on our list of more than 13,000 volunteers. The oldest volunteer who died was 71 years old – a total of 250 volunteers over the age of 60 died in the war.

Soldiers told the BBC that the rising casualties among the volunteers were partly due to their deployment to the most operationally difficult front lines, particularly the Donetsk region in the east, where they formed the backbone of reinforcements for decimated units, Russian soldiers told the BBC.

Russia’s “meat grinder” strategy continues unabated, according to Russian soldiers we spoke to. The term is used to the way Moscow is sending waves of troops There is a relentless effort to wear down the Ukrainian armed forces and expose their positions to Russian artillery. Drone footage posted online shows Russian forces attacking Ukrainian positions with little or no equipment or support from artillery or military vehicles.

Sometimes hundreds of men were killed in a single day. In recent weeks, the Russian military has made desperate but unsuccessful attempts to take the eastern Ukrainian towns of Khasiv Yar and Pokrovsk using such tactics.

According to an official study by the Military Medical Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, 39 percent of deaths among soldiers are due to limb injuries. Better first aid and subsequent medical care could significantly reduce the mortality rate.

The Russian government’s actions suggest that it does not want to force the population to fight through a new wave of official mobilization. Instead, it is increasing calls for voluntary assistance and creating incentives for this.

Statements by regional representatives in local parliaments suggest that they have been instructed by the top management to recruit people from their districts. They place job advertisements on job websites, contact men who are in debt or have problems with the bailiff, and carry out recruitment campaigns in universities.

Since 2022, convicted prisoners have been encouraged to join the military in exchange for their release. However, a new rule now allows people facing criminal charges to accept a deal to go to war rather than face trial. In return, their cases will be frozen and possibly dropped altogether.

A small number of the volunteers killed were from other countries. We have identified the names of 272 of these men, many of them from Central Asia – 47 from Uzbekistan, 51 from Tajikistan and 26 from Kyrgyzstan.

Over the past year, there have been reports of people being recruited from Cuba, Iraq, Yemen and Serbia. Foreigners already living in Russia without valid work permits or visas who agree to “work for the state” are promised that they will not be deported and that they will be offered a simplified path to citizenship if they survive the war. Many later complained that they did not understand the paperwork – like Russian citizens, they turned to the media for help.

The governments of India and Nepal have called on Moscow to stop sending their citizens back to Ukraine and to repatriate the bodies of the dead. However, these demands have so far not been heeded.

Many new recruits joining the military have criticised the training they have received. One man who signed a contract with the Russian army in November last year told the BBC he was promised two weeks of training at a firing range before being deployed to the front.

“In reality, people were simply thrown onto the parade ground and showered with equipment,” he said, adding that the equipment was poorly made.

“We were loaded onto trains and then onto trucks and sent to the front. About half of us were sent straight from the streets to fight. As a result, some people went from the recruiting office to the front within a week,” he said.

Samuel Cranny-Evans, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, says: “Basic knowledge of things like camouflage and concealment, or how to move quietly at night, how to move during the day without leaving a profile” should be taught as basic infantry skills.

Another soldier also told the BBC that equipment was a problem. “It varies, but most of the time it’s just random uniforms, standard boots that wear out in a day and a duffel bag with a label saying it was made in the mid-20th century,” he said.

“Any bulletproof vest and a cheap helmet. You can’t fight in that. If you want to survive, you have to buy your own equipment.”