Russian propagandists have created a fake site to spread false information about Ukrainian counteroffensive losses. There are no public forums or organizations that track counteroffensive casualty numbers. This information is confidential. Ukrainian military and their allies note that Ukrainian Armed Forces losses are much smaller than those incurred by the Russian army.
Russian Telegram channels, as well as social media users, are claiming that a Ukrainian website has published the number of “counteroffensive victims”. They claim that nearly 88,000 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and wounded since Ukraine’s counteroffensive began in June.
StopFake journalists analyzed the circulating screenshot from this alleged “Ukrainian site” propagating this information and found considerable evidence suggesting the site was created by Russian propagandists.
First, popular search engines do not turn up such a site – https://www.stayingalive.in.ua/. There is also no information about the site domain on the who.is and whoxy domain search engines. At the same time, the site’s cache is stored in the Yandex Russian search engine cache. Second, the site description, which appears only in Yandex, repeats Russian propaganda narratives: “It is important to remember that the counteroffensive victims are increasing due to the actions of the criminal authorities and unprofessional command. And they have names.”
This new suspicious site has a link to an email, where one can write supposedly to search for those missing in action. StopFake verified this email address using various tools. Although the address does indeed exist – it does not link to any social media accounts and there is no information that whoever or whatever is behind this email address is actually searching for missing servicemen.
The very name of the site – stayingalive.in.ua – parodies the name of the real charity fund “Come back alive” – savelife.in.ua, which helps Ukraine’s military by providing them with night vision goggles, drones, cars, surveillance systems and much more, items that help to save soldiers’ lives. This organization does not search for the missing and does not keep track of casualties.
In May 2023, Ukraine launched the Unified Register of Missing Persons, which also includes data on servicemen missing in action. Radio Liberty has prepared an instruction manual for relatives of servicemen who are missing and are unreachable. Among the organizations which look for missing military personnel, there is also no such site as stayingalive.in.ua.
Information on the number of dead and wounded Ukrainian servicemen is not published and remains confidential. In an interview for the Spanish El Mundo publication, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted that it is impossible to give an exact number of casualties and wounded, but the Russian Federation incurs much greater losses among the military than Ukraine does. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, in an interview with RFE/RL Current Time program, confirmed Zelensky’s words – that the losses on the Ukrainian side are much lesser than those of the Russians. “This is war. There are losses. But precisely because we do not use the tactics of a meat grinder, the losses on the Ukrainian side are much smaller than on the Russian side,” Reznikov said.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Anna Malyar also spoke about Ukrainian military casualties incurred in the south of the country, where the counteroffensive is unfolding. During a July 4 news marathon, she noted that Ukrainian losses in the south are “about five times less on average” (than Russian losses – ed.). “In the east, a week ago we had about eight times less losses there” Malyar said. The commander of the Ukraine’s Ground Forces Oleksandr Syrsky also pointed out that “the enemy suffers eight or even ten times more losses, especially in terms of the number of those killed.”
Earlier, StopFake debunked Russian claims that the Ukrainian army was suffering “colossal losses” and that 234 American and British military instructors had allegedly already died.
