The Russian pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper claims hackers attacked its system and briefly published a figure indicating a Russian death toll of nearly 10,000 soldiers from the fighting in Ukraine before editors deleted the information.
Aleksandr Gamov, a journalist at the newspaper, said on March 22 that the story was fake and quickly removed from the site, though not before several media outlets picked it up.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the report when asked about it at a news conference on March 22.
The online report, which appeared on the newspaper’s website on March 20, cited the Russian Defense Ministry as reporting that 9,861 Russian soldiers had died since the start of the war on February 24.
The information was seen on an archive version by various news outlets.
Russia has officially confirmed just 498 deaths, a figure given early in the conflict without updates.
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have estimated the deaths to be more than 7,000, with some estimates going near 10,000, although casualty figures in the war are impossible to independently confirm.
Yaroslav Trofimov of The Wall Street Journal wrote on Twitter that "either [the newspaper's website] KP.ru has been hacked or someone there got the leaked numbers and posted them."
