A pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid said nearly 10,000 Russian soldiers had died fighting in Ukraine before quickly removing the toll from its website.
Komsomolskaya Pravda on Sunday published a story quoting Russian Defense Ministry officials who disputed the casualty figures reported by their Ukrainian counterparts. However, the story was altered after it was first published, with the number erased, indicating that information available to the Russian public about the war remains tightly controlled.
“This is just stunning,” Illia Ponomarenko, defense reporter for The Kyiv Independent, said in a tweet noting the change to the article.
Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda said nearly 10,000 Russian soldiers had died fighting in Ukraine before promptly deleting the death toll from its website. Above: Ukrainian soldiers guard a checkpoint in Kyiv. At least eight people were killed in a bomb attack on a shopping center in the northwest of the capital on Monday. The 10-storey building was destroyed in the explosion. Russia claims missile systems were stored in the mall. FADEL SENNA
An archived version of the article cited preliminary estimates by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which put the number of Russian soldiers who have died since the invasion began at nearly 15,000, in addition to another 96 lost planes and 118 helicopters.
Ukraine’s estimates were followed by Russian Defense Ministry figures in the article, which put casualties at 9,861 and casualties at 16,153.
Ponomarenko said in his tweet that “the story was deleted almost immediately.” The image does not contain a newer version of the article.
The article, founded by Pravda in 1925 as a Soviet youth newspaper, draws a positive balance of the advance of Russian troops in south-eastern Ukraine, noting that “two tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, six field artillery pieces and mortars, and about 60 militants of a Ukrainian nationalist formation were destroyed.”
Seven Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian troops, who were also attacking military installations in the country, Pravda said.
However, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Facebook post on Monday that Russian troops are suffering “heavy casualties”, deserting or “urgently” in need of repairs to military equipment.
Russia has failed to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as its invasion nears the one-month mark. As troops advanced, the Russian government enacted new laws that censored how the war could be publicly described.
It is unclear how many casualties the Russian troops suffered.
The New York Times last week put a conservative estimate of Russian troop deaths at 7,000, more than the number of American servicemen killed in 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. CNN reported that estimates of Russian troops killed range from 3,000 to 10,000.
An unnamed NATO official told CNN that the Russian casualties are having a serious impact on military morale. “It’s becoming clearer every day that Putin has grossly miscalculated,” said a senior NATO intelligence official. “Russia continues to struggle to replace its combat losses and is increasingly attempting to use irregular forces, including Russian private military companies and Syrian fighters.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Pentagon for comment.