Pro-Kremlin tabloid deletes story claiming 10,000 Russian troops already killed: report
Pro-Russian separatists ride on top of a tank near the town of Krasnyi Luch in eastern Ukraine, on October 28, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff)

It's been less than a month since Russia invaded Ukraine, and the number of Russian soldiers killed during the invasion has numbered in the thousands.

According to Illia Ponomarenko of the Kyiv Independent, a pro-Kremlin tabloid called Komsomolskaya Pravda on Monday published a story that cited the Russian Ministry of Defense to claim that 9,861 Russian soldiers have been killed, while 16,153 have been wounded.

Ponomarenko went on to note that the publication deleted the story "almost immediately" after publishing it, although he saved a screen shot of the original page and also posted a link to the archived story.

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Many American military analysts have expressed shock at how poorly the Russian military has been performing, and Russia in less than a month has lost a total of five different generals while failing to achieve its stated objectives to taking the capital city of Kyiv and the key port city of Odesa.

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