More than 350 individuals from the Kursk region in southwestern Russia have lost their lives, with nearly 800 still unaccounted for after Ukraine’s prolonged occupation of the border area, local officials reported on Tuesday.

“The status of 789 people from the border regions, including four minors, remains uncertain. The official death toll stands at 358,” stated Alexei Tsukanov, the Prosecutor General of the Kursk region, during a local roundtable discussion.

Ukrainian forces managed to seize numerous towns in the Kursk region during their unexpected incursion across the border in August 2024, marking the first instance of a foreign military occupying Russian land since World War II.

Over 150,000 residents in the Kursk region were compelled to evacuate their homes, with some later organizing protests due to poor living conditions and what they characterized as insufficient government assistance and compensation for their damaged properties.

Last month, Russia’s military announced that it had entirely expelled Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region, aided by North Korean troops.

Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein of the Kursk region indicated at that time that the civilian death toll resulting from the nine-month occupation was 288.

However, neither Khinshtein nor Tsukanov elaborated on how these civilian casualties occurred.

Tsukanov noted on Tuesday that Russian military investigators have documented 582 alleged crimes attributed to “Ukrainian Nazis and their accomplices,” according to the regional broadcaster Seym.

Since the onset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, authorities report that at least 621 Russian civilians have died as a result of Ukrainian attacks in the Kursk, Belgorod, Bryansk, Rostov, and Krasnodar regions, as well as in annexed Crimea.

In contrast, the United Nations estimates that over 13,100 Ukrainian civilians have died since President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to cross the border more than three years ago.