Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted in an interview with British broadcaster Sky News on Thursday that the Russian military is suffering heavy casualties in Ukraine the first such admission, though Peskov did not specify the number of casualties. When asked about the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from areas north of Ukraine that Russia has not captured, Peskov said it would be wrong to call it a “humiliation,” as the reporter suggested, but added, “We have significant casualties to soldiers and for us it is a huge tragedy ».
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Until now, Russia has always been very reticent about the number of soldiers killed in Ukraine, not least because the invasion of the country is still being portrayed as a quick and successful “military special operation” to liberate Ukraine from a nonexistent Nazi regime. The latest official data from the Russian government came on March 25, when the defense minister said 1,351 soldiers had died in Ukraine.
In reality, Russian casualties are much higher: Western governments and intelligence services estimate that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers died in Ukraine.
On Wednesday, after weeks of unsuccessful attempts by Russia to seize areas north of Ukraine, the army withdrew to Russia, Belarus and eastern Ukraine, most likely to be deployed in the Donbass region and complete the conquest.
The Russian government has tried in various ways to disguise the necessary downsizing of its objectives, both by arguing that its aim is the conquest of Donbass and not all of Ukraine, and by presenting the soldiers’ withdrawal as a gesture of detente . Peskov also reiterated this in an interview on Thursday, when he said the withdrawal of the soldiers was intended to “reduce tensions in these areas [a nord dell’Ucraina] and to show that Russia is ready to create the right conditions for the continuation of the negotiations”.
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