NATO Estimates Russian Death Toll In Ukraine At Least 7,000

While the Russian government has not published statistics on military fatalities from its war in Ukraine, NATO officials are estimating at least 7,000 Russian soldiers have been killed during the first month of the invasion.

What Happened: Bloomberg reported that the total number of Russian dead could be as high as 15,000, with the number of wounded likely up to three times higher.

The estimated death toll is culled from open-source information and Western intelligence combined with Ukrainian estimates and the few disclosures that have permeated from Russia. It is unknown how many Russian soldiers are now inside Ukraine.

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What Else Happened: Separately, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has accused Russian forces of relocating 6,000 residents of the besieged city of Mariupol against their will while confiscating identity documents from an additional 15,000 people in a section of the city captured by the invading army.

Ukraine’s government claims that its civilians are being sent to a "filtration camp" in Russian-controlled territory and then moved into Russia, with the fear that some could be sent as far away as Sakhalin, a Russian island in the Pacific Ocean, according to an Associated Press report. The Ukrainians are being offered jobs that require them to stay for two years, according to the Ukrainian government. 

The Foreign Ministry’s claims have not been independently verified, and Russia claims that thousands of Ukrainian civilians evacuated to Russian-controlled territory without coercion.

Photo: An explosion in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, courtesy of DepositPhotos.com.