Russian Federation Refutes Claims of 10,000 Soldiers deaths in Ukraine, Blames Hack For Report
Russian Federation has refuted claims of 10,000 soldiers’ deaths in Ukraine, blaming hack for the report
After a report appeared on its website for more than six hours claiming nearly 10,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine, a Russian newspaper accused hackers of planting fake news on the site.
According to a web archive tool, an article on the homepage of tabloid magazine Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying that 9,861 Russian servicemen have been killed and 16,153 wounded in what Moscow refers to as its special military operation in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, those data were removed from a version of the same story that was available on the website.
Instead, an advisory said: “On March 21, access to the administrator interface was hacked on the Komsomolskaya Pravda website and a fake insert was made in this publication about the situation around the special operation in Ukraine. The inaccurate information was immediately removed.”
Russian Federation has not officially updated its casualty figures since stating on March 2 that 498 servicemen had been killed and 1,597 wounded.
Since then its offensive has run into further heavy resistance from Ukraine’s army and volunteer defence forces.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that he had no information on casualty numbers.
He declined to comment on the website incident, saying it was a question for the newspaper.
Alexander Gamov, a Kremlin correspondent for the paper, said on the same call that its website had been hacked and fake information had appeared there for several minutes.
The records show the article was then briefly inaccessible before reappearing at 1939 GMT without the casualty numbers.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, referring to the alleged figure of 9,861 Russian deaths, wrote on Telegram: “This is only the beginning of the realisation of their national catastrophe. Because in the real world there are almost twice as many as Russians killed.”
It was not possible to independently verify any of the purported casualty claims.
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