Accurately estimating the number of dead in those first weeks of the war is very difficult, thanks to the propaganda and fake news pouring in from Kyiv and Moscow. But beware the data coming from a proKremlin tabloid Russian soldiers killed: almost 10,000, with over 16,000 injured. News minutes away attesting to the heavy casualties of Vladimir Putin’s troops.
As confirmed by Ansa, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that according to the Moscow Defense Ministry, since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, “9,861 Russian soldiers have died and “16,153 have been wounded. The article published on the website of the wellknown Russian newspaper disappeared for a few minutes and returned in a retouched version: all references to the alleged number of victims disappeared.
Particularly high numbers, which hardly differ from the figures of the Ukrainian government (14,400 soldiers, editor’s note). Recall that Moscow has provided data on soldiers who have died in Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion only once: on March 2 Kremlin only 498 deaths reported. “Fascinating that someone leaked much higher numbers,” commented Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal’s chief correspondent.
Pending confirmation or denial, it is impossible not to dwell on the serious losses suffered by the army Putin in just over twenty days of conflict. According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, over 200 aircraft were shot down, 466 tanks and 1,470 armored and armored vehicles destroyed, not to mention the three sunken boats. Russian forces also reportedly lost 60 fuel tanks, 44 antiaircraft batteries and 24 drones. Finally, last Saturday, the head of the Kyiv military administration, Mykola Zhyrnov, confirmed the arrest of 127 saboteurs, including those belonging to fourteen infiltrator groups.