The Charon Project. IStories Has Launched a Database of Deceased and Missing Russian Soldiers Based on Neural Networks

IStories has created Charon — a regularly updated database of Russian army losses compiled from various sources. The project is named after the figure from ancient Greek mythology who ferried the souls of the dead across the River Styx into the realm of the dead.

At the core of Charon is a neural network that scans public reports of military deaths, identifying the deceased soldiers’ region of residence, age, and other characteristics. However, this data is incomplete, as not all cases become publicly known. To provide a fuller picture of casualties, we also include figures collected and estimated using other methods.

Charon is also a service that allows you to check whether there have been any public reports of the death or disappearance of a specific individual in the war.

• Become a project volunteer. All data undergo manual verification by our staff and volunteers. Charon is regularly updated, but our team cannot process all the data in time. If you want to contribute to the project or have noticed an error, contact data department editor Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya via email at bonchosmolovskaya@istories.media or on Telegram at @bonchosmolovskaya.

• A dataset for researchers. We aim to make the database accessible to researchers and journalists to facilitate the study of data on the Russian army in Ukraine. If you wish to gain full access to the project’s data, contact us at the same email: bonchosmolovskaya@istories.media or Telegram @bonchosmolovskaya.

Explore the Charon project here (in Russian) →