evidence, putin s spokesmen today continued to claim in an interview with sky news that the photos in bucha, ones journalists saw with their own eyes, were fakes. you ve lost thousands of troops. how many troops have you lost? we have we have we have significant losses of troops, and it s a huge tragedy for us. i have to say, i was surprised to hear him acknowledge the huge loss of russian troops. what do you think is behind that? look, he did then appear to acknowledge there have been thousands of troop losses, which is a significant departure from the last official figure that we have. i think it was on march 25th that the russian defense ministry said there were 1,351 russian soldiers that have been lost, which is in itself a
military leaders. ukraine reports at least five russian generals have been killed so far. official members including russian losses overall are hard to come by. an estimate says that the russian death toll stands between 7 and 10,000. they claim their country losses from what it called the liberation campaign of ukraine are much lower. interpreter: there are losses among our comrades. as of today, 1,351 servicemen have died, 3,825 have been injured. officials say russia is calling in reinforcements, deploying an unknown number of troops from nearby georgia. as the u.s. pleads for peace, officials admit they are struggling to get some russian leaders to pick up the phone. the joints chiefs of staff are struggling to connect, we ve made multiple attempts but they have not answered up here they have declined to take these calls.
lynda. atika shubert, great to have you with us. thank you. some military experts take the russian strategy with a grain of salt. that s partly because moscow declared the first phase of the war over, only after the ground offenses take the war. it has not taken what has become the main target, the capital, the city of kyiv. cnn s ben wedeman has the details. reporter: russian forces continue to be pushed back from the capital kyiv. although they continue to fire long-range missiles and artillery in the city, u.s. defense officials say russian forces around kyiv are beginning to take up defensive positions. friday, the russian ministry of defense acknowledged that 1,351 members of its armed forces have been killed in this war. that contrast starkly with what we re hearing from nato officials who estimate that somewhere between 7,000 and
cases repelled. it s an interesting statement to make at this stage. one month in. especially as we continue to see on lower levels though unproductive talks be e between the russian and the ukrainian sides. i want to play what the ukrainian president, volodymyr zelenskyy had to say about russian soldiers who have been killed in this war. watch this. translator: 16,000 russian military are lost. why is it so? so cnn cannot confirm this number but the scale of russian loss is much higher than they anticipated, much higher than anticipated. the russians say they re acknowledging finally losses at 1,351 military personnel killed and 4,000 wounded. that really according to all the estimates that we re hearing from the ukrainians, which we can t confirm but nato assessments is much lower. we might be looking at over 15,