Leak of classified Pentagon documents: Russia lost 110,000 troops in Ukraine war, according to FSB

The New York Times reports about this.

In one document, US intelligence officials claim that Russia's main domestic intelligence service, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, has accused the country's Defense Ministry of "concealing Russian losses in Ukraine." The revelation underscores "the continued reluctance of military officials to pass bad news up the chain of command," they say.

The FSB has estimated that the actual number of Russian soldiers wounded and killed in action is close to 110,000, the document says.

The FSB representatives also claim that the ministry does not take into account the dead and wounded among the Russian National Guard, Wagner's mercenaries or Kadyrov's fighters.

The document does not specify the casualty data that the Russian Defense Ministry publishes to the government. The last time the ministry publicly disclosed the number of deaths was in September, when Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the war.

Another leaked document said that as of February, the Russian forces had suffered losses of 190,000 to 223,000 soldiers, including up to 43,000 killed in action, compared to Ukrainian losses of 124,000 to 131,000, including up to 17,500 killed.

Earlier, US officials estimated Russia's losses at about 200,000 soldiers.

According to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has lost more than 180,500 troops.

Taken together, these documents emphasise several main reasons why, according to many analysts, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to secure a military victory in Ukraine after more than 13 months of war.

Chief among them: internal struggles and contradictions between Russian agencies responsible for different aspects of the war, including the FSB and the Defense Ministry. The leaked casualty figures provide little context for the intelligence officials' conclusion, but do indicate that the FSB has questioned the Defense Ministry's casualty figures in discussions within the Russian government.

• On April 6, The New York Times wrote about the leak of classified documents detailing US and NATO plans to build up the Ukrainian army before the planned counteroffensive. The Pentagon launched an investigation. Almost immediately, a new batch of classified documents appeared on social media, allegedly revealing US national security secrets regarding Ukraine, the Middle East, and China.

• Already on April 8, the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine reported that the so-called classified military documents on the plans for the Ukrainian Armed Forces' offensive were in fact a forgery and a special operation by Russian intelligence services. Russia could have forged the documents to disrupt Western aid to Ukraine.

• On April 9, investigative journalists from Bellingcat found out that the original source of the leaked secret Pentagon documents on the Ukrainian Armed Forces' counteroffensive was a Discord server. CNN also reported that the Ukrainian command changed some of its military plans after the leak of classified Pentagon documents to the network.

• Currently, the Pentagon is still assessing the extent of the leak, which is also related to Ukraine. Advisor to Ukraine’s presidential office Mykhailo Podolyak, in turn, noted that the documents did not contain information about the Ukrainian Armed Forces' counteroffensive. Some of these documents did not pass the authenticity test, and the White House called them fakes. 

• And Associated Press journalists learned that the person who published the secret Pentagon documents on Discord may be a child.

• Later, CNN reported that the published documents reveal the collection of information by the US intelligence community about its key partners and adversaries and competitors, including China.

• CBS journalists claimed that the FBI is working to track the leak, while the Pentagon is reducing the number of people who have access to the classified information that was made public.

• The Washington Post spoke to an alleged member of the Discord chat room where the Pentagon documents were leaked: the authors claimed that a "gun enthusiast" who worked at a military base was behind it