The figure was posted on the website of Komsomolskaya Pravda on March 20. A day later, the newspaper removed the information.
“According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian Armed Forces lost 9,861 people killed during the special operation in Ukraine and 16,153 people were wounded,” the article said.
The Web Archive service data indicates that this report stayed on the website until the evening of March 21. Later, the paragraph about casualties was removed from the article, but the original version of the story can be viewed in the archive.
The only time the Russian Defense Ministry reported casualties was on March 2, saying that 498 people had been killed.
According to the Ukrainian side, about 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the war.
