Did the American general affirm that the loss of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is up to 200,000 people?

In June 2022, a number of large Russian media shared a loud statement of a retired American military. We checked the reliability of such publications.

On June 7 and 8, 2022, Russian media published materials in which they gave an assessment of the former deputy head of the European Command of the Armed Forces of the United States, Lieutenant General Stephen Twitti regarding the loss of the Ukrainian army in recent months. The authors chose loud headlines for such materials: “General Twitti: Ukrainian losses can reach 200,000 soldiers” ("Russian newspaper"), “US General Stephen Twitti: the possible losses of Ukraine are 200,000 military” ("Fifth channel"), "In the USA announced the loss of the Armed Forces of the Armed Forces of 200,000 soldiers" ("Ren-TV") or “The losses of Ukraine can be 200,000 soldiers - General of the United States” (Eurasiadaily). Other publications (for example, "Tsargrad", "Moscow Komsomolets" And News.ru) cited such an assessment of the losses of the Ukrainian army in subtitles or the first paragraphs of their publications.

Most of the publications that gave Twitti evaluate, refer to publication In the German Internet Gazeta Linke Zeitung. She appeared on June 7th. In turn, the text on the Linke Zeitung website is a translation of the note by Alexander Sitnikov, published On June 6, on the Russian resource, “Free Press” (there is a corresponding link at the end of the material on the German website).

Sitnikov in his text gives such a quote from a retired American general: “I think that the war in the Donbass is unfolding in favor of the Russians. They do not put the whole mass of combat power with infantry and tanks there. They collected their artillery, and this is how they succeed. Russia has a damn lot of combat power, much more than Ukrainians. And there is no way that Ukrainians will ever destroy or defeat the Russians. And I will say more, Ukrainians will never have enough combat power to drive the Russians from Ukraine. ”

Further, the author of the publication reports: “According to him (Twitti. - Approx. Ed.) An assessment, 200,000 soldiers mysteriously disappeared from the Armed Forces. "Who knows where they are today?" The general asked. This huge number of military are simply not in the field of view of American curators. Either the disice took place with mobilization, or much worse - they are defeated. " At the same time, Sitnikov does not give a link to Twitti’s source and does not even specify when and under what circumstances the former military shared such an opinion.

Part of the quote about "damn great combat power" on June 4 Conducted The state RIA Novosti in a note entitled "The American General voiced the last option for the Armed Forces." This material states that Twitti made the relevant statement “during a speech on the Council on International Relations,” and a link to a transcript. On May 31, Lieutenant General Twitti participated in the online discussion, whose participants discussed possible scenarios for ending the conflict of Russia and Ukraine. He organized this meeting Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) - an independent non -state analytical center founded in the USA in 1921. The CFR website is available both a transcript and Video recording Discussions.

To begin with, the long quote from Twitti “glued” from the context of phrases, which a retired American military used in answers to various questions. This can distort the perception of his statement, but in general, the quotes coincide with the given in the transcript. The situation is completely different with the assessment of the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which in the presentation of the Russian media "can be up to 200,000 people." Literally Twitti said the following: “I want to remind you that we often hear about losses from Russia. But we hear very little about losses among Ukrainians, although we keep in the mind that they also lose their soldiers during the war. At first there were about 200,000. Who knows where they are now? "

In other words, Twitti not only did not evaluate the losses among the Ukrainian military at 200,000 or any close quantities, but did not give any assessments at all. The retired general only wondered why such a little statistical information about the dead and wounded from the Ukrainian side was published in the public domain. The number 200,000, which sounded in Twitti’s replica, is its assessment of the number of Armed Forces (in mid -2021 composed About 250,000 people), not losses.

“Verified” recalls that during the fighting it is impossible to quickly, reliably and fully calculate the losses that both sides of the armed conflict suffered, as well as to check any similar statistics. We urge our readers to treat such information extremely carefully.

We thank Alexei Malakhovsky, Turning Our attention is at a distorted quote from an American general in the publications of the Russian media.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. The transcript of the discussion in Council On Foreign Relations
2. Is it true that an American general surrendered in Mariupol?