The European Commission on Wednesday retracted its president Ursula von der Leyen’s comments on the number of Ukrainian military casualties during the war of aggression launched by Russia, a mistake widely speculated by the Russian media.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought untold death, devastation and suffering. We all remember the horrors of Buchi. It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed to date,” von der Leyen said in a video message earlier on Wednesday.

Later, the President of the European Commission deleted the video from his Twitter page.

Dana Spinant, the Commission’s deputy spokesperson, later confirmed that von der Leyen was wrong.

“Many thanks to those who pointed out the inaccuracy of the numbers in the previous version of this video. The estimate used from external sources was supposed to be for casualties, i.e. both dead and wounded, and was intended to show Russia’s brutality,” she wrote on Twitter.

In the new recording, published by the spokeswoman of the European Commission, there is no part where von der Leyen talks about the human losses allegedly suffered by Ukraine during the war, which was launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24.

“Damage suffered by Ukraine is estimated at 600 billion euros. Russia and its oligarchs must compensate Ukraine for the damages and the costs of rebuilding the country, the head of the European executive also said, adding that “we blocked 300 billion euros from the reserves of the Central Bank of Russia and froze 19 billion euros from the money of Russian oligarchs.”

Her comments came as she announced on Wednesday that the bloc’s executive branch had proposed a plan to seize Russian assets frozen abroad.

Ursula von der Leyen’s mistake looked even more strange, because in a video message she spoke about the dead “Ukrainian military”, as if confusing soldiers with officers, although she was the German Minister of Defense for 6 years from 2013 to 2019.

His comments about the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers during the war were also removed from the European Commission’s website.

What the Russian press writes about the mistake of Ursula von der Leyen

The European Commission president’s comments were widely covered in the Russian press on Wednesday morning due to the huge number of losses the EU executive mentioned.

Later, the Russian media also wrote about canceling their words and removing this part of the video message, implying that this was due to the fact that von der Leyen had inadvertently presented the correct numbers.

“The words about the losses of the Ukrainian army have disappeared from the video message of the head of the European Commission,” – said the headline of Russia’s oldest daily newspaper “Izvestia” on Wednesday afternoon.

“The video was published on November 30 on Twitter by the head of the EC. In particular, it is about the reassessment of the losses suffered by the Ukrainian side during the hostilities, as well as the fact that more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 20,000 civilians have died since the beginning of the special operation. Now there is no mention of the number of dead,” the Russian journalists of this publication write.

“Since the beginning of hostilities, more than 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and more than 20,000 civilians have died. The information about this was deleted approximately 2 hours after the publication of the statement and video appeal,” TASS writes.

“In von der Leyen’s video statement, which is currently available on Twitter (none has since been deleted), an 11-second clip is clearly visible from which the phrase about the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers has been deleted. In addition, the duration of the original clip was shortened by about 7 seconds,” TASS adds.

Kommersant, Russia’s largest financial newspaper, also notes:

“From the recording of the speech of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the words that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the beginning of the military conflict were cut out. The recording was published on Twitter. Posts cannot be edited on the social network, so the original video has been removed.”

“Kommersant” journalists also quoted the spokesman of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Serhiy Nikoforov, who stated that the information about the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is sensitive. According to him, only the Commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defense and the President of Ukraine can publish such data.”

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