According to estimates of Western special services, the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the war in Ukraine is more than 350,000 people, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.

He did not mention how many of these Russian soldiers were killed, offering only the total number of dead and wounded in the Russian camp. This balance cannot be independently verified, while neither camp publishes data on its losses, instead exaggerating the losses of the enemy, said the German news agency DPA, quoted by Agerpres.

In his statement to the press after a meeting at NATO headquarters with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Stoltenberg also sought to emphasize that the Ukrainian military had recently shot down valuable Russian reconnaissance aircraft, referring to the two downed planes with early warning radars. A-50, sinking or damaging a significant part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

“Russia is paying a very high price for little gain,” Stoltenberg said, as Ukraine’s army, strapped for troops and ammunition, tries to halt the advance of Russian troops returning to the offensive on Ukraine’s eastern front after a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive. last summer

• Read also: How many Russians died at the front in Ukraine during two years of war? The data was published by an independent Russian publication

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said on February 24, two years after the beginning of the Russian invasion, that the losses of the Ukrainian army reached about 31,000 killed soldiers, without specifying the number of wounded, the first official number of casualties provided by Kyiv, a statement after which Moscow said that “Zelensky is lying” and that he would underestimate the real figure “several times”.

Unidentified US officials told the New York Times last August that around 70,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and between 100,000 and 120,000 wounded at the time.

According to French journalist Emmanuel Grinspan, who has been to the front in Ukraine on several occasions, most recently recently, the balance sheet released by Zelenskyi would be correct only in terms of the number of “officially documented” deaths and does not include the missing soldiers, who would number an estimated 30,000 more. most of whom are also dead.

“A source close to (Ukrainian) military intelligence told me that according to estimates, about 60,000 people died. Another 30,000 are considered missing (according to the source, 90% dead, 10% imprisoned in Russia), as well as thousands of unidentified dead who are placed in morgues in the absence of DNA tests,” said a French journalist in an interview. published this month’s Le Monde.

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