The
started on 30 September 2015, with 4,000 Russian military personnel being stationed in Syria. The Russian forces also consisted of 25 strategic bombers, 20 tactical bombers, 12 attack bombers, 8 fighter aircraft, 16 attack helicopters and various other aircraft.
As of spring 2019, there have been 116 officially confirmed
Russian Armed Forces fatalities in the war. Also, two investigative groups, ''
Fontanka
The Fontanka (russian: Фонтанка), a left branch of the river Neva, flows through the whole of Central Saint Petersburg, Russia – from the Summer Garden to . It is long, with a width up to , and a depth up to . The Moyka River for ...
'' and the Moscow-based ''Conflict Intelligence Team'' (CIT), reported a conservative estimate of at least 73–101
private military contractors
A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military ...
(PMCs) being killed between October 2015 and mid-December 2017,
40–60 of whom died during the first several months of 2017, according to ''Fontanka'' and one more PMC was killed in late December 2017. In early 2018, the founder of CIT stated the PMCs' death toll was at least 100–200, while another CIT blogger said at least 150 were killed and more than 900 were wounded. They belonged to the Russian company "
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
".
In February 2018, a number of Russian PMCs were reported to have been killed during the
Battle of Khasham. Estimation of casualties varies with some sources reported up to 200 Russian contractors died during the strikes. On 4 January 2020, the
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 264 Russian servicemen and PMCs were killed in Syria during the civil war.
In addition, at least
23 fighters have been killed that were possibly regular military, but their status has not been officially confirmed.
List of fatalities
Confirmed
The following list contains 135 servicemen listed as killed among the regular Russian Armed Forces and 4 officers of the Russian Federal Security Service:
Status unclear
The following list contains another 23 killed that were possibly regular military, but were not officially confirmed.
Out-of-country deaths related to the operation
On 25 December 2016, a Russian military
Tupolev Tu-154
The Tupolev Tu-154 (russian: Tyполев Ту-154; NATO reporting name: "Careless") is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian ...
with 92 people on board
crashed in the Black Sea during a flight from
Sochi International Airport
Sochi International Airport (russian: Международный Аэропорт Сочи; ) is an airport located in Adler District of the resort city of Sochi, on the coast of the Black Sea in the federal subject of Krasnodar Krai, Russia. So ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
to
Khmeimim,
Syria. There were no survivors. Among those killed were: 64 members of the
Alexandrov Ensemble choir
The Alexandrov Ensemble choir (established Moscow 1926) is the choir of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
It has for most of its history been a male-voice choir of tenors and basses, based in Moscow and directed and conducted by Alexander V. Alexandrov f ...
, nine journalists, eight crew members, eight other passenger soldiers, two federal civil servants and
a prominent Russian humanitarian worker.
See also
*
that include Russian aircraft lost during the Syrian Civil War.
*
Wagner Group
The Wagner Group (russian: Группа Вагнера, Gruppa Vagnera), also known as PMC Wagner ( «Вагнер», ChVK «Vagner»; ), is a Russian paramilitary organization. It is variously described as a private military company (PMC), a ...
References
{{Russian Conflicts
*
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Russia
Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war
Russia–Turkey military relations