The Russian military has reportedly suffered a major casualty in the form of a senior military officer.
Lt. Col. Nikolai Gorban, 36, head of the 4th Branch of the Russian Federal Security Service’s Special Operations Branch, was reportedly “assaulted somewhere in Ukraine on April 2.”
The circumstances surrounding the death of Gorban, who was reported to have fought in Syria and possessed two medals for bravery, were not mentioned. According to Pavlushko, Gorban was reportedly among the highest-ranking officials of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Pavlushko also published a photo of a plaque with Gorban’s image, including flowers. The message, written in Russian, said Gorban “took part in conducting combat operations and special operations both in Russia and abroad.”
The Russian military has lost several commanders in the past few days as part of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Above, a Russian soldier carries fragments near where cluster munitions were reported, next to a burned car after a missile attack on a residential area in northern Kharkiv August 8, 2022. SERGEY BOBOK/AFP via Getty Images
“When conducting combat missions, he showed himself to be a courageous and resolute officer… He was proud of his service with the Russian FSB,” the statement said.
Gorban’s death would reportedly be the 99th of a Russian colonel or lieutenant colonel during the Russia-Ukraine War. The 98th such fatality was Colonel Vasily Kleshchenko, an army aviation commander who headed the 344th Combat Operations and Retraining Center for elite helicopter pilots and snipers, according to The Mirror.
The Kremlin’s first colonel, Olga “Korsa” Kachura, 52, was also killed last week when a Ukrainian missile hit her car as she was driving in the town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to Margarita Simonyan pro-Kremlin Editor of RT.
Horlivka Mayor Ivan Prikhodko confirmed the death via telegram, calling Kachura – nicknamed “Wolf” and commanding a rocket artillery division stationed against Ukraine – a “brave and wise woman”.
Kachura was posthumously awarded the honor of Hero of Russia “for courage and heroism shown in the performance of military duties”. Before her death, Kachura spoke about her nickname during an RT documentary.
“She guards the hearth, her children, her family,” Kachura said. “Even in nature, no wolf defends its young as aggressively as a she-wolf.”
The Russian military deaths come as some believe the conflict has ended thanks to arms and other help from Ukraine’s allies.
Nico Lange, a German MP and chief of staff to the country’s defense minister, recently said that what differentiates Ukrainian attacks from Russia’s “rolling barrage” of artillery is that Ukrainian civilians mobilize and fight the enemy in occupied cities behind enemy lines.
“The decisive thing about the past few days is that Russia is now forced to react to the statements and actions of the Ukrainians,” said Lange. “Until now it was the other way around: the Ukrainians had to react to everything that Russia did.”
High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) are also proving fruitful for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The US-funded weapons have been praised by individuals, including Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, who told Telegram on Monday morning that over 100 Russian soldiers had been killed by such missiles.
“Today, high-precision HIMARS missiles fired at the temporary deployment points of the occupying forces at industrial sites in different districts of the city of Melitopol,” Fedorov wrote in his Telegram post.
Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian defense ministries for comment.