Out of a total of 258 residents, 39 men have signed contracts to fight. Of these, 12 have been confirmed dead and 7 are missing. “All our men have gone to the ‘special military operation.’ There is no one left to chop wood for the winter and heat the stoves,” the village women told the regional governor during a visit.
In the village of Sedanka, in Russia’s Far East, life has always been difficult. Most homes lack running water, indoor toilets or central heating, even though temperatures regularly drop to -10 degrees Celsius in winter.
Surrounded by forests, tundra and swamps, the district center can only be reached from May to October by boat or special vehicles, and in winter only by snowmobile or helicopter. There is almost no work and residents survive mainly by fishing and growing their own food. Today, residents say, almost all the men aged 18 to 55 have left, having joined Russia’s war in Ukraine. “It’s heartbreaking, so many of our people have been killed,” says Natalia (name changed for security reasons) in an interview with the BBC World Service. “My sister’s husband and my cousins are at the front. In almost every family, someone is fighting,” she said.
Sedanka is located on the northwestern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, near the Sea of Okhotsk, more than 7,000 kilometers from the front line in Ukraine. Of the 258 residents, 39 men have signed contracts to fight. Of these, 12 are confirmed dead and 7 are missing.
“All our men have gone to the ‘special military operation,’” the village women told the regional governor during a visit in March 2024. “There is no one left to chop wood for the winter and heat the stoves.” According to a joint analysis by the BBC, the Russian media outlet Medizona and volunteer researchers, 40,201 Russian soldiers have so far been verified as killed in 2025 alone. Estimates indicate that the real number of casualties for this year could reach around 80,000, making 2025 the deadliest year for Russia since the start of the full-scale occupation on February 24, 2022.
In total, the BBC has identified 186,102 Russian soldiers killed in the war, while military experts believe the real figure could be much higher, from 286,000 to over 413,000 casualties. Ukraine has also suffered heavy losses. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last month that “officially” about 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, while independent estimates put the number at up to 200,000.
The analysis shows that losses in Russia are disproportionately high in poor rural areas and among indigenous communities. Sedanka is inhabited mainly by Koryaks and Itelmen, indigenous groups that could theoretically be exempt from mobilization. However, anti-war activists say state propaganda portrays these communities as “born warriors” to encourage them to join the army. One of them was Vladimir Akeev, 45, a hunter and fisherman who signed a contract in the summer of 2024 and was killed four months later. At his funeral, his coffin was carried on wooden sleds over the snow, as the cemetery could only be reached by snowmobile.
Meanwhile, 67% of Russian soldiers killed come from rural areas and small towns, even though only 48% of the population lives there. Moscow has the lowest per capita casualty rate, while poor regions like Buryatia and Tuva have mortality rates up to 33 times higher.
In Sedanka, a monument to the “participants of the special military operation” was inaugurated in the fall of 2024. The authorities promised support for the families of the soldiers and honorary status for the village, but most of the promises have not yet been fulfilled. One in five homes has been declared unsafe by the state, the only school is in a state of emergency, and the loss of working-age men has further aggravated the situation. Sedanka today is a symbol of the heavy price that Russia’s remote villages are paying for the war in Ukraine.