side ruthless mercenaries known as putin s private army on a mission to assassinate the country s leader. cnn s david commences explains. a russian mercenary sakes a selfie video in syria. it s a recruit many style pitch. allegedly for the notorious group. a brutal force bleached to be linked to the kremlin. in the shadow of russian s invasion of ukraine a senior ukrainian defense official tells us that vaug they are officials were in the country and had a very specific mission. what is the objective, do you think in ukraine right now? they wanted to assassinate the leadership of ukraine. our president and prime minister. so that was the goal. and the couple of groups, couple of people were sent to ukraine without any success. translator: i am here. we are not putting down arms.
assassinate the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy. [speaking foreign language]. reporter: a russian mercenary takes a video in syria. it s a recruitment style pitch. allegedly for the notorious group a brutal force believed to be linked to the kremlin. in the shadows of russia s invasion of ukraine a senior ukrainian defense official tells us that contractors were in the country and had a very specific mission. what is the objective do you think in ukraine right now? they wanted to assassinate the leadership of ukraine. our president and prime minister. so that was the goal and the couple of groups, couple of people who were sent to ukraine without any success. translator: i am here. we are not putting down arms. reporter: the primary target he says president volodymyr zelenskyy. ukraine s military says
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,