Don’t miss a thing! Sign up to the Daily Star’s newsletter
Colonel Alexei Sharov has become the latest high-ranking Russian officer to lose his life in Ukraine as the country suffers its biggest loss of military leaders since the end of the Second World War.
According to an as-yet unconfirmed report from the Ukrainian armed forces, Colonel Sharov died outside Mariupol – where some of the bloodiest fighting of the war has taken place.
Sharov, commander of the the 810th Guards Separate Order of Zhukov Brigade in the Russian Marines, is the fifth colonel and the fifteenth senior Russian officer to lose his life since fighting began 27 days ago.
Russia has not updated its casualty figures since March 2, when an official statement said that 498 servicemen had been killed and 1,597 wounded.
However, Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported earlier this week that the invading force had lost close to 10,000 men. The paper later announced that it had been “hacked” and that the report was fake news.
There have been reports of Russian troops deserting en masse, in some cases walking over the border into Belarus in a bid to avoid a Court Martial at home. Military expert Major-General David Fraser, a retired Canadian army officer, has described the losses as "unsustainable".
'Nazi' Vladimir Putin is 'rounding up Ukrainians' into sinister Russian 'work camps'
The grim death toll of top Russian military officials killed so far includes:
- Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev
- Major General Vitaly Gerasimov
- Major General Andrei Kolesnikov
- Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky
- Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko
- Colonel Sergei Porokhyna
- Colonel Sergei Sukharev
- Colonel Andrei Zakharov
- Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky
- Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Agarkov
- Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov
- Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov
- Major Viktor Maksimchuk
- General Magomed Tushaev
- Captain Andrey Paliy
- Captain Alexey Glushchak
- Colonel Alexei Sharov
The precise scale of Russian losses remains unconfirmed but last week, American intelligence offered a conservative estimate that 7,000 Russian troops had been killed in the conflict.
A senior Pentagon official told the New York Times that Russian forces were “struggling on many fronts,” including routine supply lines and logistics, and that some Russian troops had reportedly been evacuated because of frostbite.
Despite the cost, Putin is determined to capture the Black Sea port of Mariupol, where some 100,000 civilians are said to be trapped in appalling conditions as the invading forces continue to bombs and shell the city.
Stay in the loop with all the latest Daily Star news by signing up for one of our free newsletters here.
Russian troops 'using patients and doctors as human shields' in Ukrainian hospital
Local authorities say 80% of Mariupol’s infrastructure has been destroyed, some of it beyond repair.
Andrii Ianitskyi, the head of the centre for excellence in economic journalism at Kyiv School of Economics explained: “Mariupol has a practical and symbolic significance for Putin.
“It is a large port city,” he told the Guardian, “and a base for Ukrainian armed forces. So if Russians want to have a land corridor [from the Donbas region ] to Crimea, they need to control the city.
- Vladimir Putin
- Russia
- Russia Ukraine war
- Ukraine
Source: Read Full Article