00:00Verifying claims that Ukraine has lost 1.7 million soldiers in the war.
00:08Russian hacking group Killnet has claimed to have accessed confidential intelligence
00:13that reveals that 1.7 million Ukrainian soldiers have died or gone missing since the start of Russia's invasion.
00:20The allegation has gone viral online.
00:22This post, shared by the known disinformation platform Disclose.tv, has been seen over 2.5 million times.
00:30This user shares screenshots of purported evidence backing the claim, such as military records and IDs.
00:36It has also been amplified by state-sponsored Russian media like Pravda and RIA Novosti.
00:42But there is no credible independent evidence to back up these claims.
00:46Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation described it as an absolutely absurd fate,
00:52adding that Ukraine has never had a regular army of 1.7 million people,
00:57and that the size of the army is in fact around 880,000 people.
01:01Official data on the number of Ukrainian and Russian casualties doesn't exist,
01:06but available estimates suggest Ukrainian losses are far below 1.7 million people.
01:12Ukrainian President Zelenskyy estimated in February that 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed
01:19and more than 390,000 wounded since the start of the war.
01:23Another independent report puts Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed at between 60,000 and 100,000,
01:31with a total of 400,000 casualties.
01:34Experts say this is part of a Kremlin-backed propaganda campaign,
01:39where a false figure is backed up with random documents to create the illusion of truth.
01:44Analyst Petro Andushenko said that while the claim is blatantly false,
01:48the hacker group has probably accessed sensitive documents which it is using to legitimise the lie.
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