Ukraine claims '14,000' Russian troops have died in war

Ukraine's general staff has claimed that over 14,000 Russian troops have been killed in the first three weeks of Moscow's invasion of the country.

In an operational update posted to Facebook, Ukrainian officials said that approximately 14,400 Russian soldiers have been killed.

The update also said that Moscow has lost a huge amount of military equipment, including around 1,470 armoured troop carriers, 60 tanks and over 100 fighter jets and helicopters.

These claims cannot be independently verified, though Western intelligence sources have suggested that around 7,000 troops have been killed and between 14,000 and 21,000 more have been injured.

It comes as Ukrainian forces claimed to have killed a fifth Russian general.

Lieutenant General Andrei Mordvichev would be the most senior Russian commander killed in the conflict so far, though again, this claim could not be independently verified.

With respect to Russian military losses, Ukrainian estimates tended to be high, while Russian estimates of their own losses tended to be low. Combat deaths can be inferred from a variety of sources, including satellite imagery and video image of military actions.

According to a researcher at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University in Sweden, Ukraine's government was engaged in a misinformation campaign aimed to boost morale and Western media was generally happy to accept its claims, while Russia was "probably" downplaying its own casualties. Ukraine also tended to be quieter about its own military fatalities.

The number of civilian deaths as well as military deaths is impossible to determine with precision given the fog of war.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) consider the number of civilian casualties to be considerably higher than the one the United Nations are able to certify.

Excluding the Russian soldiers, at least 29 people from 12 countries besides Ukraine died during the war.