The war of numbers continues. On Monday, a Moscow tabloid close to the Kremlin briefly published an article (cached version here) giving a very heavy toll of 9,861 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the war in Ukraine. If the figure is plausible, given US intelligence estimates, it seems surprising that the Russian Ministry of Defense could report such a high total, when the Kremlin was talking about less than 500 dead in early March. In the aftermath, the newspaper claimed to have been hacked and that “inaccurate information” had been published.
FAKE OFF
Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) is a popular Russian tabloid. If it is not a state media of propaganda, it belongs to the oligarch close to the Kremlin Grigory Berezkin. The article relayed Sunday’s daily update from Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov. Referring to the assessment put forward by the Ukrainian army of 14,700 Russian soldiers killed, the journalist Maria Pavlova indicated that Moscow disputed this figure. She then gave a Russian toll attributed – without citation – to the Ministry of Defense of 9,861 dead and 16,153 wounded.
A few minutes later, KP unpublished the article, then re-uploaded it without the last four paragraphs. In the process, the newspaper assured on its Telegram channel that its publishing platform had been hacked, and that “inaccurate” information had been deleted.
At least 7,000 soldiers killed, according to US intelligence
In his daily update on March 20, Igor Konashenkov did not give an assessment, according to the English subtitled video published by the Russian Ministry of Defense on Telegram. However, it cannot be ruled out that the journalist obtained it from a source in the ministry. The only official Russian figure dates from March 2: Moscow claimed to have lost 498 soldiers in a week of fighting.
Hacking, human error, Russian failure or act of defiance by an employee: at this stage, it is impossible to decide with certainty. Contacted by 20 Minutesthe Russian daily and the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not responded Monday evening.
Still, this figure, if we can doubt its origin, is not necessarily far from reality. A “low” estimate from American intelligence last Wednesday advanced a minimum of 7,000 Russian losses in 21 days – or about 8,600 by extrapolating over five additional days. By way of comparison, 14,453 Soviet soldiers perished in ten years of war in Afghanistan.
Source: 20minutes
