Remember when Russia accidentally revealed the losses of its elite paratroopers?

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has taken a major toll on the Russian military and a March 3rd estimate by the British Ministry of Defence reported that Moscow has likely lost over three hundred and fifty thousand killed or wounded soldiers.

Russia hasn't just lost a lot of its mobilized or conscripted troops, either. A separate report from Britain's Ministry of Defence in August 2023 determined that Moscow likely lost 50% of its elite paratroopers up to that point in the war.

Those elite paratroopers were either killed or wounded while fighting for Russia in Ukraine. But how was the British Defense Ministry able to that upwards of 50% of those soldiers were lost during the war?

It was comments from a Russian general made in a prerecorded video for the country's annual celebration of Airborne Forces (VDV) Day that revealed thousands of the country's elite paratroopers had been wounded or killed fighting in Ukraine. 

Britain's Ministry of Defense wrote on August 2nd that Russian celebrations were “overshadowed by an apparently unsanctioned disclosure of the scope of the casualties the elite force has suffered in Ukraine.”

The Commander-in-Chief of Russia’s VDV General Colonel Mikhail Teplinksy said in a recorded video for the event that 8500 paratroopers had been wounded and returned to the front or had refused to leave the front. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Mil.ru, CC BY 4.0

"More than 5,000 wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment and more than 3,500 of our wounded refused to leave the front line," Teplinksy said in his address according to a translation from The Moscow Times. 

The video address was published by the Defense Ministry-run broadcaster Zvezda as well as on the organization’s website before it was later taken down and also removed from the Russian Defense Ministry’s official Telegram channel. 

British intelligence noted the video was taken down quickly. But the damage had already been done and the number of wounded paratroopers given by Teplinksy allowed intelligence analysts to estimate the amount of VDV casualties at that time in the war.  

“He did not comment on how many troops had been killed or were too seriously wounded to return to duty,” the British Ministry of Defence war update read. 

“However, extrapolating Teplinksy’s figures endorses the assessment that at least 50 percent of the 30,000 paratroopers who deployed to Ukraine in 2022 have been killed or wounded,” the update continued. 

The Moscow Times noted that the Russian independent news organization Agentstvo reported Teplinksy’s video might have been taken down because officials in the Kremlin didn’t want those VDV casualty numbers publicly disclosed.

The last time the Russian government had provided casualty numbers at that time was back in September 2022 when the Kremlin claimed only 5,937 soldiers had been killed in Ukraine, The Moscow Times reported. 

Estimates of Russian casualties from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in its latest update on March 19th put Moscow’s losses at a staggering 432,390—which is a number that should be taken with a grain of salt. 

Politico noted at the time of the first British Defence Ministry report that neither Russia nor Ukraine provide exact figures on their casualties and that would make sense considering they’re still engaged in a brutal conflict for the future of several Oblasts in Ukraine's east. 

“The VDV was heavily involved in the initial phase of Russia's invasion, which focused on capturing Kyiv,” wrote Business Insider’s Jake Epstein. “The elite paratroopers suffered heavy losses early on and continued to struggle in the months that followed." This could explain why the force has suffered such heavy casualties.