How many Russians have been killed and wounded during Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine?

The Ukrainians have put out numbers, as have the Russians, but each has reason to manipulate the numbers a bit.

But a pro-Kremlin paper put out a number that may have been a little too truthful for their own good, reporting that almost 10,000 troops had been killed.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, the pro-Kremlin tabloid, says that according to Russian ministry of defense numbers, 9,861 Russian soldiers died in Ukraine and 16,153 were injured. The last official Russian KIA figure, on March 2, was 498. Fascinating that someone posted the leaked number. pic.twitter.com/LHrBWIQ49z

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) March 21, 2022

Citing the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Komsomolskaya Pravda said that 9,861 Russian troops had been killed and 16,153 had been wounded in Ukraine since the invasion began. They later retracted the number and claimed they had been hacked. You have to know that someone got into some deep trouble there for letting the number leak out.

The last official number of dead that Russia put out was 498 with 1597 injured on March 2, a false number. U.S. intelligence was estimating the numbers were around 7,000 people killed so this number was much higher than that estimate — an incredible number killed in just a month. There were even some higher numbers that were floating around, as our sister site Hot Air observed.

A former internal affairs minister of #Ukraine @AvakovArsen shared the intercepted Russian military summary for March 18: Rus. Army troops killed 12,814. Private company Liga (former Vagner) troops killed 4,451. Total number ofservicemembers killed at war in Ukraine: 17,265. pic.twitter.com/TuSTIyHW5n

— Victor Kovalenko (@MrKovalenko) March 21, 2022

This is an incredible number for the force they have on the ground, so you have to wonder how they intend to meet their objectives without them. By comparison, in almost twenty years of war in Afghanistan, only 2,448 Americans were killed.

On top of that, six high-ranking Russian military officials, including four generals, have also been killed according to reports. The Russians still haven’t taken the capital of Kyiv and there are now reports from the Ukrainians that they pushed the Russians out of one of the Kyiv suburbs and reclaimed the town of Makariv. The Russian troops are also failing to advance in most of the rest of the country.

This is going to infuriate Vladimir Putin. According to reports, he’s already gone after at least two senior security officials for misjudging how the invasion would progress. Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB’s foreign intelligence branch, and his deputy Anatoly Bolyukh were arrested according to an expert on Russian security. Putin didn’t expect the fierce Ukrainian resistance so someone did blow that assessment big time. Then a top general in Putin’s personal army- – the internal security forces — was arrested by the FSB.

The problem is if Putin is faced with being pushed to the wall of losing, what might he do to strike out to prove that he’s “winning” the war? Joe Biden claimed that Putin might use biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine. But if that’s true — if he even thinks that’s true — why is he still having Russia negotiating and involved in the fashioning of the new Iran Deal? Of course, they shouldn’t be making such a horrible deal at all, it makes no sense. On the one hand, you say that Russia is threatening such things and on the other, you say let’s trust them to help ensure Iran’s compliance? But that’s the illogical tapdance that the Biden team is trying to sell us now.