The Kremlin has scrambled to remove a video posted online by its own defense ministry that revealed the number of soldiers in an elite unit wounded during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In a now-deleted video, General Colonel Mikhail Teplinsky revealed on Wednesday that 8,500 of Russia’s Airborne Forces (VDV) paratroopers have been wounded since February of last year.
Addressing his troops on the Day of Airborne Forces, he said that over the last 17 months “more than 5,000 wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment, and over 3,500 of our wounded refused to leave the front line at all.”
The video of his speech was published by the Russian ministry of defense TV channel, “Zvezda.”
The video has now disappeared from the Zvezda website and its Telegram channel.
Russia’s VDV forces were at the forefront of the initial stages of Russia’s full-scale invasion and the battle for Kyiv.
VDV forces attempted to take control of the Hostomel airport located 10 km to the northwest of the capital, from which the Kremlin planned to fly in reinforcements and take the city.
The plan failed miserably and while waiting for reinforcements that never arrived, the VDV forces were sitting ducks for Ukrainian artillery and drones.
They were forced to retreat at the end of March.
Both Kyiv and Moscow are exceptionally secretive about troop casualty figures – Moscow’s official total of 5,937 has not been updated since September and was almost certainly a vast underestimate even at the time.
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Last month, the UK’s defense minister claimed a quarter of a million Russian troops have been killed, injured or gone missing since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at an event in London, Ben Wallace was discussing the dire state the Kremlin currently finds itself in, reflected by the aborted Wagner mutiny and the multiple firings, killings and disappearances of Russian generals in recent weeks.
He said: “If you look at the generals being fired, you look at Prigozhin – if anyone predicted last year that Prigozhin was going to march on Moscow, General Surovikin who is currently resting in Moscow at the moment – he’s one of their most capable generals.
“So, the splinter in the hierarchy of the Russian army is very real and the casualty rates are horrific.
“It would not be wrong to say at least 230,000 to 250,000 dead or injured Russians.”
The exact numbers of soldiers both Russian and Ukrainian troops killed and injured since the start of the full-scale invasion have been notoriously hard to verify.
Both Kyiv and Moscow regularly make claims about the numbers of enemy personnel their forces have taken out of action, while confirmation of their own losses is far harder to come by.
Wallace’s claim of 230,000 to 250,000 is actually in line with Ukrainian claims which, as of Friday, Aug 4, stand at 248,490 “liquidated personnel.”
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