Russian general claims only 1,400 Russian troops have died in Ukraine

(Image credit: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

published 26 March 2022

Russian Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi, deputy head of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said Friday that 1,351 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine and 3,825 have been wounded, The Associated Press reported.

This report is far lower than estimates from NATO — which on Wednesday said Russian forces have likely suffered between 7,000 and 15,000 fatalities since the invasion began on Feb. 24 — and the United States, which placed Russian military deaths at around 7,000. In an address to the nation on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said "more than 14,000" Russian soldiers had been killed.

Rudskoi's report also contradicts numbers provided by the Russian Defense Ministry. On Sunday, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article citing a Russian Defense Ministry report that 9,861 Russian soldiers had been killed — a number more than seven times higher than the figure Rudskoi provided Friday — and over 16,000 wounded. The casualty figures were stealth edited out of the article four hours after it was published.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Grayson Quay was the weekend editor at TheWeek.com. His writing has also been published in National Review, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Modern Age, The American Conservative, The Spectator World, and other outlets. Grayson earned his M.A. from Georgetown University in 2019.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox