In 2024, Almost a Thousand Women Were Killed in Acts of Domestic Violence in Russia

According to the figures Russia provided to the UN, 963 women in total were killed in acts of domestic violence in Russia last year. 530 of them were murdered by their partners (former or current husbands or boyfriends), and the rest (433 women) were killed by other family members.

The total ratio of women killed in acts of domestic violence reached 47% of the total number of those murdered in the country during the year. This is the highest ratio in 15 years: from 2010 to 2019, it rose from 23% to 45% and then began to decline gradually. Last year was the first one when this ratio began to rise since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

This trend can be explained by changes in the approach to the statistics: over time, police officials have gotten better at filling out crime reports, explains Ivan Markov (name changed for security reasons), an expert on Russian judicial and law enforcement system:

“Previously, the ‘relationship with the victim’ field would be left blank. In other words, if one person killed another, the statistics would not not reveal the nature of their relationship. Now this field is filled in increasingly carefully. Global criminology tells us that for a country like Russia this parameter (the ratio of women killed in acts of domestic violence — Ed.) should have reached about 70%. This is what’s going on: we are seeing a slow increase, which probably means the police started to fill out their forms much more carefully.”

The last time Russia published data on domestic violence victims was in 2022. According to the data from the Prosecutor General’s Office, 1,311 women were killed by their family members or partners in 2022. This is higher than the number of 1,008 victims Russia provided to the UN. The figures probably differ due to the way they are recorded: the Prosecutor General’s Office statistics includes both murders and attempted murders, while the data provided to the UN only includes intentional homicides. Since 2023, the Prosecutor General’s Office has not published crime statistics reports. 

The UN data also shows that in 2024 the number of males killed in Russia surged by 40% — from 6,600 to 9,300. Prior to that, it had been steadily declining since 2002, with the exception of a slight increase in 2014–2015.

The increase seems to be due to civilians' casualties in the occupied territories of Ukraine now being included in the number of victims of “intentional homicide.”

“Previously, deaths during combat operations would not be recorded as murders. But at some point, Russia started to count missile strikes as ‘terrorist attacks’ and to open official investigations. In such cases, the killed civilians are considered victims of ‘terrorist attacks.’ As far as I know, the practice has not yet been fully established, but the fact that we are seeing a sudden reversal of a steady downward trend suggests that this might be the case,” Ivan Markov says.

The UN methodology indeed counts deaths by terrorist attacks as cases of intentional homicides. The UN definition includes cases of deaths of people who were not combatants and died as a result of actions intended to “intimidate a population, or to compel a state or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” The breakdown by cause of death, however, hasn't been included in the data for Russia since 2022.