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Russian Courts See 2.5-Fold Increase in Claims of Missing or Deceased Individuals in 2024

In 2024, Russian courts processed 20,000 claims to declare individuals missing or deceased, marking a 2.5-fold increase compared to the previous year, when the situation closely resembled pre-war times, with approximately 8,000 lawsuits annually nationwide.
This was reported on February 4 by Mediazona.
The news agency discovered that most of these claims were filed by military unit commanders, with the list excluding soldiers killed in combat—whose deaths have not been officially confirmed.
“The consent of relatives is not necessary to recognize a person as missing. And families are not always satisfied with such lawsuits, as they are left without money and without information about what happened to their loved ones,” the media wrote.
In a January 19 interview, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Russian forces suffered their heaviest losses in 2024 since the start of the full-scale war in 2022, with total casualties reaching 434,000 troops. Of these, approximately 150,000 were killed in action last year alone.