World War II casualties of the Soviet Union World War II casualties of the Soviet Union World War II fatalities of the Soviet Union from all related causes number was approximately 27,000,000, both civilian and military, although the exact figures are disputed. The number 20 million was considered official during the Soviet era. The Russian government puts the Soviet war dead at 26.6 million based on a 1993 study by the Russian Academy of Sciences. this includes 8,668,400 military deaths as calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The figures published by Russian Ministry of Defense have been accepted by most historians outside Russia (see table below "Western
First Chechen War on the use of the armed forces in such situations. Russian government officials feared that a move to end the war short of victory would create a cascade of secession attempts by other ethnic minorities. On 6 March 1996, a Cypriot passenger jet was hijacked by Chechen sympathisers while flying toward Germany. On 9 January, a Turkish passenger ship carrying 200 Russian passengers was taken over by what were mostly Turkish gunmen who were seeking to publicize the Chechen cause. Both of these incidents were resolved through negotiations and the hijackers surrendered without any fatalities being inflicted. On 6 March,