Destroyed Russian military vehicles are seen on a street in Ukraine’s Borodyanka settlement March 3. (Maxim Levin/Reuters)
It has been almost a month since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, sending tens of thousands of troops from three sides in an offensive against its neighbor.
Although Ukraine’s military is much smaller, its forces have put up a fierce resistance that has managed to stem Russian advances in some parts of the country. A senior NATO intelligence official said Monday the signs pointed to a stalemate in Russia’s offensive as Russian ground forces continued to falter and Russian warplanes were unable to achieve air superiority.
It is unclear exactly how many Russian troops have been killed in their campaign so far.
On March 2, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry put the number of Russian servicemen dead at 498. But that number has not been updated by officials since.
Then on Monday, a pro-Putin Russian tabloid — later removed — published a report with an updated death toll of 9,861 by Russian forces in the war in Ukraine, citing the Russian Defense Ministry.
The report by the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda originally read: “According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian armed forces lost 9,861 dead and 16,153 wounded during the special operation in Ukraine.”
CNN analyzed the website’s HTML code, which indicated that the article was published at 00:09 Moscow time on Monday.
Seconds after CNN read the original article — at 9:56 p.m. Moscow time according to the HTML code — the story was updated and all references to the death toll were removed. This update on the outlet’s website came shortly after the article drew attention from social media posts citing the number of deaths.
The tabloid’s original report concurs with US Department of Defense estimates that there have been as many as 10,000 Russian military deaths. Ukraine has put the number even higher.
CNN is unable to independently verify these numbers.
After the update, Komsomolskaya Pravda released a statement stating that “access to the admin interface was hacked” and that “a fake insertion was made into a publication.”
They claimed that “inaccurate information was immediately removed.” CNN analysis showed that the update came after 21 hours.
The Kremlin dodged questions about the course of the war in Ukraine that were addressed to the Ministry of Defense on Tuesday. The ministry said it was “not authorized” to release a number of Russian military casualties while the “military operation” was ongoing.
CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, Paul P. Murphy, Vasco Cotovio, and Nathan Hodge contributed to this post.