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Topics: Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
Poppy Bilderbeck
An official from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has revealed the latest estimate for the amount of Russian troops who have been captured, injured or killed in Ukraine.
Since President Vladimir Putin first sent troops across the border on 24 February, marking the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has appeared reluctant to share statistics of the number of casualties and fatalities.
Figures have only been published twice by Russia. Once on 2 March, stating that 498 Russian soldiers had been killed, and a second time, briefly, on 21 March by pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which reported that 9,861 of the Kremlin's armed forces have died so far.
Yesterday, 23 March, which marked nearly a month since the invasion first began, a senior NATO military official released the most up-to-date estimate.
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Based on information gathered from Ukrainian authorities, any information Russia itself has released and other intelligence, an anonymous NATO official revealed that the organisation estimates that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion first began, as per Business Insider.
This number aligns with the estimate given on 21 March by Komsomolskaya Pravda. The tabloid stated: "According to the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9,861 people killed, 16,153 people were injured."
The statistics were later taken down from the site, but the information was screenshotted and shared by multiple social media users.
Both the figures revealed by Komsomolskaya Pravda and the estimate by NATO also match the approximation given by American intelligence.
The estimate, cited in The New York Times, stated that the death toll for Russian troops, as of last week, stood at 'more than 7,000'.
However, it also noted this was 'the conservative side of the estimate'.
From the very start of the invasion Putin was reported as having 'overestimated' the capabilities of the Russian military, according to military intelligence.
In what he first anticipated would be a landslide victory, the Kremlin leader has now been left with soldiers low in morale, crying over the loss of their friends, and even disobeying central command to bomb civilian areas.
Putin may have praised his fighters as the 'real heroes' of the invasion, but captured Russian soldiers have claimed that they'll be 'dead' if they are sent back home regarded as failures.
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