About 300 men working for a Kremlin-linked Russian private military firm were either killed or injured in Syria last week, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
A Russian military doctor said about 100 had been killed, and a source who knows several of the fighters said the death toll was in excess of 80 men.
The timing of the casualties coincided with a battle on Feb. 7 near the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor where, according to US officials and associates of the fighters involved, US-led coalition forces attacked forces aligned with Moscow’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Photo: AFP
The clashes show Moscow is more deeply involved in Syria militarily than it has said.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said initial information was that five Russians in the area of the battle might have been killed, but they were not Russian troops.
She said reports of tens or hundreds of Russian casualties were disinformation inspired by Russia’s opponents.
The casualties are the highest that Russia has suffered in a single battle since fierce clashes in Ukraine in 2014 claimed more than 100 fighters’ lives. Moscow denies sending soldiers and volunteers to Ukraine and has never confirmed that figure.
The wounded, who have been medically evacuated from Syria in the past few days, have been sent to four Russian military hospitals, according to five sources familiar with the matter.
The military doctor, who works in a Moscow military hospital and was directly involved in the treatment of wounded men evacuated from Syria, said that as of Saturday evening last week there were more than 50 such patients in his hospital, of which about 30 percent were seriously wounded.
The doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said at least three planeloads of injured fighters were flown to Moscow between Friday last week and Monday morning.
He said they were flown back on specially equipped military cargo planes, adding that a fellow doctor who flew on one of the medevac flights told him that about 100 people in the Russian force had been killed as of the end of last week, and 200 injured.
He said most of the casualties were private military contractors.
Yevgeny Shabayev, leader of a local chapter of a paramilitary Cossack organization who has ties to Russian military contractors, said he had visited acquaintances injured in Syria at the Central Hospital in Khimki, on the outskirts of Moscow, on Wednesday.
He said the wounded men had told him that the two units of Russian contractors involved in the battle near Deir al-Zor numbered 550 men. Of those, there are now about 200 who are not either dead or wounded, they told him.
In related news, the UN said Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura misspoke when he told the UN Security Council that more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed in Syria earlier this month.
Speaking to the council on Wednesday in New York City, de Mistura said: “Civilians have been killed on a horrific scale: Reports suggest more than 1,000 civilians in the first week of February alone.”
The UN press team in Geneva, Switzerland, where de Mistura has his offices, later issued a “revised” transcript of his remarks.
It referenced more than 1,000 “civilian casualties,” not deaths alone.
The UN human rights office has cited reports that 277 people were killed and 812 injured in Syria between Feb. 4 and Friday last week.
Additional reporting by AP
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