The list of 350 names appears on Mediazona's website and in a separate section of the "Russia 200" project. The outlet carried out the count together with BBC Russian and volunteers.
It includes only those who held conscript status at the moment of death. Mediazona separately identifies almost 700 people who signed contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry while serving as conscripts; they were not included in the 350 because they were already listed as contract soldiers by the time they died. In most cases, the journalists were unable to establish whether the decision was voluntary.
The largest single episode of conscript deaths, according to the outlet, was Ukraine's incursion into the Kursk region in August 2024. At least 60 people died there over the course of a month. Beyond fighting on the border, conscripts also die in shelling.
Mediazona names pressure to sign a contract as a separate category of risk. According to accounts from service members and their relatives, commanders threaten soldiers with criminal cases, the guardhouse and physical violence. Both new recruits and those with only weeks left until demobilization come under pressure.
The Russian Defense Ministry denies that conscripts take part in the war. In March 2022, Igor Konashenkov acknowledged "several facts of the presence" of conscript soldiers in the units that invaded Ukraine and said that practically all of them had been withdrawn to Russian territory. According to various estimates, up to 2,000 conscripts may have ended up in Ukraine in the first days of the war.
Since the start of the invasion, journalists have established more than 285,000 names of killed Russian service members. Actual losses are higher: taking expert estimates into account, the death toll may range from 518,224 to 663,384.
Mediazona says it has still not restored subscriptions cut off in Russia and asks readers to help arrange 1,500 subscriptions with foreign cards.