If you recall, Russia denies ever sending forces to the Ukraine. It denies any involvement by active troops in the events that have transpired in Crimea.
However it looks like the Kremlin’s story has been derailed when they inadvertently released the casualty count of Russian forces lost in eastern Ukraine.
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The story was written by a Russian publication translated Business Life, and the report was on the mundane topic of how military pay is structured. But nestled in the article is an official looking release.
It claims that payments have been made to the families of 2,000 fallen soldiers and 3,500 troops that were severely wounded “in eastern Ukraine.”
Obviously, Russian sensors picked up on this and quickly deleted the entry. It’s unclear if this leak was intentional or not by Business Life.
Here is a screenshot of the article:
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More from Forbes:
Russian president Vladimir Putin has decreed that all Russian casualties “in peacetime” be a state secret. In addition to criminal charges arising from divulging state secrets, families risk losing pensions and lump-sum payments if they reveal that their sons were killed in Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers’ associations have been branded “foreign agents” for collecting data on Russian casualties. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was murdered shortly before completing his study of Russian casualties in Ukraine. Russian civil rights organizations, working against the fog of official resistance, could confirm onlyseveral hundred battlefield deaths.
Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn) reports on markets, finance, entrepreneurship, finance, and leisure, scarcely an outlet for sensational information. Its innocuously entitled “Increases in Pay for Military in 2015,” however, reveals what appear to be official figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids “in eastern Ukraine.” Russian censors quickly removed the offending material but not before it had been webcached by the Ukrainian journal Novy Region (New Region).
Has Russia finally been busted or do you think this was a mistake? Will the international community respond? Let us know your thoughts in the below comments!
