The list covers officials ranging from deputy heads of municipal districts or urban okrugs to vice governors. Ten of the 16 had been convicted or were facing criminal cases before being sent to the war, mostly related to bribes and abuse of power.
On September 22, Kommersant reported Polezhaev’s death, citing two interlocutors from the former official’s circle. According to one of them, Polezhaev served in an assault unit and was killed in a missile strike in Kharkiv Oblast. Polezhaev led Belgorod from 2015 to 2019, then became deputy governor of Belgorod Oblast. In 2023, he was detained in a bribery case: investigators claimed that a construction company gave him a Porsche Panamera and a Range Rover with a total value of about 18 million rubles for patronage in the execution of state contracts, and in August 2024 a court sentenced him to five years in prison. In April 2025, The Insider, citing the Belgorod outlet Pepel, wrote that Polezhaev was allegedly only listed in the reserve unit of BARS and in fact remained at home.
Of the 16 cases found by The Insider, three involve former and current deputy governors: Sergey Efremov in Primorsky Krai, Alexey Zolotukhin in KhMAO, and Polezhaev in Belgorod Oblast. Efremov, who oversaw the region’s domestic policy and at the same time commanded the volunteer Tiger unit, died in early 2025 in Kursk Oblast. Former KhMAO deputy governor Alexey Zolotukhin, who was responsible for security in the regional government, voluntarily went to war after resigning and died in 2026.
At the city level, The Insider names former first deputy head of Yugorsk Dmitry Krylov, former deputy mayor of Chelyabinsk Sergey Reprintsev, and former deputy head of Magnitogorsk Dmitry Gavrilov. Krylov signed a contract with the Defense Ministry, led an assault platoon, and died in the fighting for Avdiivka in February 2024. Reprintsev went to war after being arrested in a bribery case involving 10 million rubles and died in May 2025, while Gavrilov, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for bribes, was reported dead only in September 2026.
Another ten cases involve heads and deputy heads of districts and urban okrugs: Igor Ustyuzhanin, Alexander Noskov, Vladimir Svetlichny, Alexander Arteyev, Alexander Afanasyev, Alexander Sytov, Fyodor Ivashchuk, Aydar Zagirov, Oleg Skornyakov, and Sergey Utkin. Ustyuzhanin went to war after being sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for corruption, Noskov left prison with a six-year sentence for abuse of power and died in February 2024, and Svetlichny, Arteyev, Afanasyev, Sytov, and Utkin also died after signing contracts. Arteyev, former first deputy and acting head of the Kortkeros District in Komi, received 11 years in prison for bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power and died in June 2024. Afanasyev, former head of the Gornozavodsky District of Perm Krai, was sentenced to three years for abuse of power, signed a contract with the Defense Ministry in December 2024, and later died. Sytov, former head of the Tsilninsky District of Kurgan Oblast, was declared dead in summer 2026; before that, he had been sentenced to seven years in prison for bribery, fraud, and embezzlement, including 100,000 rubles collected for mobilized servicemen’s needs.
Head of the Ulchsky District of Khabarovsk Krai Fyodor Ivashchuk resigned in March 2025, voluntarily signed a contract, and joined the BARS-8 Khabarovsk unit, and in August of that same year died while carrying out a combat mission. Deputy head of the Uchalinsky District of Bashkortostan Aydar Zagirov also served under contract and died while carrying out a combat task. Former deputy head of the Novorossiysk intra-city district Oleg Skornyakov signed a contract in spring 2025, went missing a few months later, and in March 2026 the authorities confirmed his death. Former deputy head of the Tugulymsky urban okrug of Sverdlovsk Oblast Sergey Utkin, sentenced to eight years in prison for bribery on an especially large scale, signed a contract while in custody and died in the war.
In June 2026, Meduza counted at least 48 dead representatives of the authorities, including deputies, election commission staff, and a federal judge. Since then, at least three more deaths became known — Alexander Sytov in July, Dmitry Gavrilov in September, and Konstantin Polezhaev on September 22 — and The Insider raised the lower bound to at least 51 people. The count does not include former deputy governor of Krasnodar Krai Sergey Vlasov: in spring 2026, reports of his death appeared, but Kommersant found that he is officially listed as missing and his body has not been found.
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