It’s been almost a month since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, deploying tens of thousands of troops into the offensive against the neighboring country from three sides.
While Ukraine’s army is much smaller, its forces have resisted fierce resistance that has been able to halt Russia’s advance in some areas of the country. A senior NATO intelligence official said signs on Monday of a stalemate were looming over the Russian offensive, with Russian ground forces still stalled and warplanes Russia could not achieve air superiority.
So far it is not clear exactly how many Russian troops were killed in their operation.
On March 2, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry put the number of Russian servicemen killed at 498. But that number has not been updated by officials since.
Then, on Monday, a pro-Putin Russian tabloid published – then removed – an updated report on the death toll of 9,861 Russian armed forces during the war in Ukraine. , citing the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The report from the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper initially read: “According to the Russian Defense Ministry, during the special operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9861 killed and 16153 wounded.”
CNN analyzed the website’s HTML code, showing that the article was published on Monday at 12:09 Moscow time.
Seconds after CNN read the original article — at 9:56 p.m. Moscow time, in HTML — the story was updated and all references to the death toll were removed. That update on the store’s website came shortly after the article began drawing attention from social media posts mentioning the death toll.
The initial report from the tabloid was in line with the US Department of Defense’s estimate that up to 10,000 Russian servicemen were killed. Ukraine has put the number higher.
CNN was unable to independently verify any of these metrics.
Following the update, Komsomolskaya Pravda, published a statement saying that “access to the admin interface was hacked” and “a fake insert was created into a publication.”
They stated that “inaccurate information was removed immediately.” CNN’s analysis shows that the update came after 9 p.m.
The Kremlin has dodged questions about the course of the war in Ukraine, brought to the Defense Ministry on Tuesday. The ministry said it had “no authority” to publicize the number of Russian servicemen killed while “military operations” were still going on.
CNN’s Natasha Bertrand, Paul P. Murphy, Vasco Cotovio, and Nathan Hodge contributed reporting to this post.
