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The chief spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, accidentally acknowledged that the Russian Armed Forces have lost 9,861 soldiers, while 16,153 have been wounded on the battlefield since they began their invasion against Ukraine last February 24.
According to a report in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP), which is sympathetic to Vladimir Putin’s government, Konashenkov acknowledged the losses while trying to refute Ukrainian forces’ reports of destroyed Russian weaponry.
Russia’s mistake in trying to refute Ukraine
In the most recent report, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry indicated that about 15,000 Russian soldiers had been killed by Ukrainian forces since the beginning of the invasion.
“The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation refutes the information of the General Staff of Ukraine on the alleged large-scale losses of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine,” read the KP text. “According to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 people killed, 16153 people were wounded.”
The publication was removed from the KP website.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal‘s chief foreign affairs correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov, said on Twitter that Ukrainian soldiers “were shocked” to discover that Russian troops do not have modern-technology turnstiles, but use “old-school rubber bands.”
Trofimov also pointed out that, according to the last official Russian report, on March 2, only 498 human losses were recognized, which would imply a difference of 9,363 soldiers killed in less than 20 days.
