Russia accidentally reveals at least 8,500 paratroopers were wounded in Ukraine

Aug. 6 (UPI) -- A top Russian general accidentally revealed last week that at least 8,500 paratroopers have been wounded in Ukraine since the start of the war, the British Defense Ministry said.

The British Defense Ministry said in a statement Sunday that Gen. Col. Mikhail Teplinsky, the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces, made the admission in a recorded video address on Wednesday to celebrate VDV Day -- a day to honor the blue berets. The video has since been deleted.

Teplinsky said 8,500 paratroopers had been wounded and later returned to duty or had refused to leave the front line at all, according to the British Defense Ministry. The commander did not reveal how many were killed or unable to return to the battlefield.

However, the British Defense Ministry said that its intelligence analysts believe Teplinsky's revelation can be used to draw the conclusion that at least 50% of the 30,000 paratroopers who deployed to Ukraine in 2022 have been killed or wounded.

The Ukrainian military claims that, since the start of the war, at least 249,700 Russian troops have been "liquidated." It has been difficult to ascertain a true accounting for the number of Russian lives lost in the war.

Journalists with the independent Russian media outlets Mediazona and Meduza worked with a data scientist from Germany's Tübingen University to sift through Russian government data to come up with an estimate for the number of deaths recorded by Russia.

"The Kremlin deliberately hides how many Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine because of its geopolitical ambitions," Meduza journalists wrote in an analysis of the data published last month.

At the time, the analysts estimated that about 47,000 Russian soldiers have died. Mediazona has since worked with the BBC News' Russian service to collect data to corroborate the number of deaths and have confirmed at least 28,652.

"These figures do not represent the actual death toll as we can only review publicly available reports which include social media posts by relatives, local media reports, and statements by local authorities," Mediazona journalists wrote in its update. "The actual death toll is significantly higher."