A former Kremlin professional has admitted Russia now only has 1/2 its elite airborne troops on the grounds that invading Ukraine.

Putin’s elite paratrooper squad, referred to as the VDV, had already been decimated ahead of his mobilisation of two,000,000 troops in September 2022.

The revelation comes from Mikhail Zvinchuk, a former military press legit and creator of the Rybar channel on Telegram, who found out the inside track on Russian state TELEVISION.

‘Many are announcing that you just can’t see the airborne troops at the frontline,’ he mentioned.

‘Sadly, that is the target fact – via the start of mobilisation, our airborne forces lost 40-50 percent of body of workers.

He added: ‘As of now, out of the old and examined formations with distinct equipment, no longer that many are closing.’

It was identified the VDV had sustained heavy losses and had been highly absent from the frontlines, however the true scale in their decimation was once not publicly known.

Russia’s airborne forces led the rustic’s army within the preliminary boost into Ukraine in February 2022.

As Much As 1/2 Putin’s elite airborne troops have been killed because the start of the warfare (Picture: Reuters/AP)

Prime numbers of casualties have been stated inside of weeks of the conflict beginning, with many killed throughout the failed attempt to take Kyiv.

Officially, Russia had round 45,000 airborne troops in 2016. By Way Of 2021, some 27,000 had been settlement provider personnel.

Among those who died early within the conflict were Lt-Col Sergei Moskvichev, FORTY FIVE, who used to be buried with full military honours after his body took 3 months to retrieve.

Another was Col. Andrei Vasilyev, 49, commander of the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment, primarily based in Ryazan.

Also killed was once Colonel Maxim Kudrin, in his overdue 30s, a deputy commander in the 106th Tula Airborne Department for Armaments.

Multiple graves of airborne troops have not too long ago been noticed in cities like Ryazan and Tula, which can be intently related to the elite forces.

The BBC Russian Service up to now stated the loss of more than 900 special forces soldiers, paratroopers, marines and pilots in September.

The Kremlin hardly ever discloses figures for its war dead, and people supplied are concept to be extensively downplayed.

As of September 2022, the Russian military claimed FIVE,937 troops were killed in Ukraine, at the same time as Western figures estimate the quantity to be over ONE HUNDRED,000.

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