Putin Admits Russia Has Suffered Huge Losses in Ukraine
Russian President
Vladimir Putin may have accidentally admitted to losing over 360,000 troops in his country's war with Ukraine.
Putin made the admission during an annual four-hour press conference in Moscow on Friday. The purported losses would be orders of magnitude beyond those previously claimed by Russia, with the Kremlin having only officially admitted to around 6,000 troop deaths.
The newly claimed losses—which could include deaths, major injuries or deployments away from the battlefield—were calculated in a post on the "Maps and Arrows" Telegram account of
Russian military analyst Ian Matveev.
Russia lost 360,000 people in the war, according to Putin," Matveev wrote. "244 thousand mobilized. 486 thousand volunteers. And there are only 617 thousand at the front. Entertaining military mathematics from Putin.
"The losses were 113 thousand people," he continued. "But there was also the invasion group and those who were recruited before mobilization. And this is around 250 thousand. That is, Putin literally admitted irretrievable losses in the amount of 363 thousand people."
Newsweek reached out for comment to Putin's office via email on Thursday.
Despite the figures from Matveev, it is not clear that Putin was admitting to 363,000 lost soldiers. However, the figure does come close to the 315,000 claimed Russian troop
casualties that were revealed in a leaked declassified U.S. intelligence document this week.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed in a
Facebook post on Wednesday that Russia had lost 342,800 troops since first launching its invasion on February 24, 2022. The U.K. military also estimated in mid-November that 302,000 Russian personnel had been lost.
"Putin literally admitted irretrievable losses in the amount of 363 thousand people," said Russian military analyst Ian Matveev.
www.newsweek.com
Gotdamn.
Biden cooked this bytch
apnews.com
