Probate Registry

The Probate Registry is a Russian state administrative system that records inheritance and estate proceedings following a death. Mediazona and Meduza, two independent Russian-language outlets, identified it as a source for measuring excess male mortality — the statistical gap between expected and actual male deaths in the 20-50 age cohort, which in wartime corresponds closely to military casualties. On 9 May 2026, they published an estimate using this methodology: 352,000 Russian soldiers killed by end-2025. This figure runs alongside, not as a replacement for, Mediazona's existing named-and-verified casualty list, which had reached 216,205 confirmed deaths by 1 May 2026.

The excess-mortality methodology has precedent in wartime demography. By comparing actual probate filings with predicted death rates derived from pre-war actuarial baselines, researchers can infer undercounted deaths without requiring named records. The method is particularly useful when the subject state suppresses or delays death reporting — a pattern Mediazona and Meduza have documented extensively in Russia since 2022. The Probate Registry does not require cause-of-death disclosure, making it harder for Russian authorities to selectively exclude war deaths, though underreporting of estates (common among rural or low-income families) introduces its own systematic bias.

The 352,000 figure is significantly higher than both Ukraine's official claims and Western intelligence assessments of Russian killed-in-action, which tend to use narrower definitions. It is also qualitatively different from the named list: it is a statistical inference, not a verified count. Mediazona has been careful to present the two methods as complementary rather than competing, with the named list providing a verifiable floor and the Probate Registry method suggesting a wider envelope.