47,000 Russian soldiers had been killed

8,500+ Russian paratroopers wounded in Ukraine, admits Moscow commander

Russian general’s video message was taken offline after publication.

BY NICOLAS CAMUT

More than 8,500 Russian paratroopers have been wounded while fighting in Ukraine, a Russian general said Wednesday in a rare official admission about the number of casualties suffered by Moscow’s troops in Ukraine.

“More than five thousand wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment, and over three and a half thousand of our wounded refused to leave the front line at all,” Mikhail Teplinsky, commander of Russia’s Airborne Forces, said Wednesday in a video message posted on state-run broadcaster Zvevda, which is run by the Russian defense ministry.

Initially published in the early hours of Wednesday, the video was then taken down from Zvevda’s website and Telegram channel, according to the Moscow Times.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia provide up-to-date, official counts of their own losses in the war.

Western intelligence estimates put Russia’s losses between 40,000 and 60,000 deaths, and as many as 200,000 casualties in total, while a recent statistical analysis by two independent Russian media outlets and a German scientist showed that about 47,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.