Hundreds of Russian troops are ready to return to frontlines in Ukraine upon rehabilitation, Russian Defense Ministry’s outlet says
About 1,400 Russian troops that were injured while taking part in Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine have already been discharged from hospital, Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of Russia’s Defense Ministry has reported.
The injured service members were treated in a top military hospital in Moscow, where some of them underwent surgeries, the outlet reported on Sunday, noting that the recovering troops are now to embark on rehabilitation in specialized treatment facilities.
“All of them have expressed willingness to rejoin their units after a full recovery to further fulfill their duties as part of the ‘special military operation,’” Red Star reported.
Moscow first revealed the number of troops killed and injured in Ukraine on March 2. At that time, the Russian Defense Ministry put the death toll at 498, and said that 1597 servicemen were injured, while denying Kiev’s claims that there were “countless” Russian casualties as disinformation.
Since then, the Russian military has not updated the death toll. The Ukrainian side, on the contrary, regularly releases its estimates of slain Russian soldiers, claiming“over 12,000” Russians could have lost their lives in the offensive.
On Sunday, Kiev said that at least 35 people were killed and over 130 were injured at The Yavoriv military range, also known as the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security, outside Lviv, a city near Ukraine’s border with Poland.
The Russian military confirmed the long-range strike at the Yavoriv range and a nearby military training center, saying it was carried out with high-precision weapons. Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said during a briefing on Sunday that “up to 180 foreign fighters” were killed and a big cashe of foreign weapons were destroyed in the attack. Kiev later designated the claims as “propaganda.”
Moscow attacked its neighbor in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
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