Russia admits soldiers killed, wounded in Ukraine offensive

MOSCOW: Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday Russian soldiers had been killed and wounded during an offensive in Ukraine, but added its losses were far lower than those suffered by Ukraine without specifying a number.

Since the start of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, armed forces have hit 1,067 Ukrainian military sites, Russian news agency Interfax cited the ministry as saying. Russia’s army admitted that there were “killed and injured” soldiers among its troops in Ukraine, and labelling Ukrainian soldiers as “Nazis”, according to Moscow’s army spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

“Russian servicemen are showing courage and heroism while fulfilling combat tasks in the special military operation. Unfortunately, there are killed and injured among our comrades… The losses of the Russian Armed Forces are many times less than the number of servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces,” state news agency cited Konashenkov as saying.

He also said Russian soldiers were captured by the Ukrainians. “But we know how the Ukrainian Nazis treat the few captured Russian servicemen. And we see that the tortures and tortures are the same as those of the German Nazis and their henchmen-policemen during the Great Patriotic War,” Konashenkov said.

The spokesman added the armed forces have “hit 1,067 objects of the military infrastructure of Ukraine” since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the offensive against Ukraine. “Today alone, seven anti-aircraft missile systems have been destroyed, including one S-300 near the city of Kramatorsk. Three Bayraktar TB-2 attack unmanned aerial vehicles have been shot down in the suburbs of Chernigov,” he said.

Ukrainian authorities launched a website to help Russian families track down soldiers who have been killed or captured fighting in Moscow’s invasion of the country. The site contains pictures of the documents and corpses of Russian soldiers Ukraine said have been killed since the attack. It also has videos of soldiers Ukraine claims it has captured.

“I am talking to you in Russian because this site was created for you,” Viktor Andrusiv, an adviser to the Interior Minister, said in a video posted on the site. “I know that many Russians are worried about how and where their children, sons, husbands are and what is happening to them — so we decided to put this online so that each of you could search for your loved one who Putin sent to fight in Ukraine.”

Andrusiv said that over the past three days Ukrainian forces had captured almost 200 Russian soldiers and more than 3,000 Russian troops had died. The name of the site references the well-known term Gruz-200 (Cargo-200) that was used by Soviet military for corpses being flown back from the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Russia’s defence ministry has so far given no details of any military losses in Ukraine since launching a multi-pronged attack. The head of the North Caucasus region of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, became the first official to report the death of a Russian soldier in Ukraine.

He posted a tribute on his official Instagram page, paying homage to an officer he said had been killed during the “special operation to defend Donbas.” The Kremlin has launched a major propaganda campaign to control coverage of the war in Ukraine and has ordered media to use only Russia’s official versions of events.