At least 200 Russian soldiers aged 18 or younger have died in the war with Ukraine, BBC confirms

Source: BBC Russia

At least 200 Russian servicemembers who were no older than 18 have died since the start of the full-scale war with Ukraine, BBC News Russian reported. The outlet, working alongside the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, is compiling a named list of the dead.

In June, researchers identified the first servicemember born in 2008 to be killed in the war: Alisher Svirin, a resident of the Moscow region who died on May 1, 2026.

Svirin served as a contract soldier and worked as a machine gunner in the 123rd Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade, according to a brief obituary published by Roman Tikunov, a member of the city council of the Pavlovo-Posadsky district.

He was buried in the Heroes’ Alley of the Novoye Gorodskoye cemetery in Pavlovsky Posad.

When Svirin signed his contract and deployed to the combat zone is not known. Given his age, he could not have served for more than three months.

As of June 12, researchers have identified the names of 226,055 Russian servicemembers killed in the war with Ukraine, based on open-source data, BBC Russia reported.

At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.

If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.

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At least 200 Russian soldiers aged 18 or younger have died in the war with Ukraine, BBC confirms

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At least 200 Russian soldiers aged 18 or younger have died in the war with Ukraine, BBC confirms

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