The Kremlin says that the US "takes out of the sleeve" its figures on Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine

MADRID, 2 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Kremlin has affirmed this Tuesday that the United States does not have reliable data on Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine and has stressed that Washington "has pulled out of its sleeve" the figures recently provided on losses of the Russian Army in the city of Bakhmut (east).

"It is something that they have pulled out of their sleeves," said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dimitri Peskov, who has noted that "Washington has no way of giving any correct figures, since it does not have those data."

Thus, he has emphasized that "one must be guided only by the figures that the Russian Ministry of Defense publishes in a timely manner", as reported by the Russian news agency Interfax.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday that Russia has suffered some 100,000 casualties -- dead and wounded -- between regular soldiers and Wagner Group mercenaries since December alone in and around Bakhmut.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army has indicated this Tuesday in a message on its account on the social network Facebook that about 191,500 Russian soldiers have been "liquidated" since the start of the invasion, unleashed on February 24, 2022 by order of the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

Russia has not provided data on casualties in the conflict since September, when Shoigu confirmed the death of 5,937 soldiers. The Russian news portal Mediazona raises the total number of deaths to 19,688 -including 1,665 during the last 15 days-, figures that it considers "corroborated" through publicly available data, a work carried out together with the British television channel BBC.