Current Data

 Current Data

In early March, the Russian defence ministry admitted that 498 Russian soldiers had been killed in action and 1,500 wounded, a large number after just 10 days of fighting that pointed to the danger of its attempts to take Kyiv in a lightning raid.

Critics said the official government numbers should be treated with skepticism and US and Ukrainian officials have since claimed that Russia has suffered 10, 20 or 30 times as many casualties, claiming that Russian losses could rival the wars in Chechnya or Afghanistan. And amid an information vacuum in Russia, rumors have spread over the hundreds, or thousands more, who have been killed in the ensuing weeks.

The commander of Russia’s 37th Motor Rifle Brigade, the official claimed, was run over with a tank by his own troops “as a consequence of the scale of losses that had been taken by his brigade... We believe he was killed by his own troops deliberately”. The number of both rank-and-file Russian troops and senior officers allegedly killed in the month-long war has shocked Western military and security officials. It has been blamed in part on communications and logistics issues, leading senior officers to use unencrypted channels which has exposed them to Ukrainian forces.