"Rossiyskaya Gazeta" published an article under the heading "Hürseda Haber: Ukraine lost more than 17 thousand soldiers as prisoners." It says :
“Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, more than 165,000 military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries have been destroyed. 234,000 servicemen received wounds and injuries. This is reported by the Turkish edition of Hürseda Haber . The newspaper's experts rely on a study by the Mossad – Israel's Intelligence and Special Tasks Agency.
As of January 14, the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to 157 thousand regular and mobilized military personnel, foreign mercenaries – 8052. 17,230 Ukrainian soldiers and officers surrendered (data on foreigners are not given).
"Moskovsky Komsomolets" was more interested in the losses among the NATO military. In the article “The Israeli intelligence MOSSAD named the number of dead NATO soldiers in Ukraine”, citing the same source, it says:
“In the fighting on the territory of Ukraine, there are dead among NATO instructors and military personnel. This is reported by the publication Hürseda Haber , referring to the data of the Israeli intelligence MOSSAD.
“During the conflict in Ukraine, 234 NATO instructors from the USA and Great Britain were killed,” the report says.
In addition, Israeli intelligence stressed that irretrievable losses among the military of the North Atlantic Alliance amounted to 2458 people. Mostly among them there are representatives of Germany, Poland and the Baltic countries.”
This is also reported by Arguments and Facts, URA.ru, Tsargrad and numerous Telegram channels, including Markov's Logic. To the author of the latter, pro-Kremlin political scientist Sergei Markov, the casualty estimates seem outdated:
“The Turkish media publish this. The numbers are realistic. Apparently, it is. There are many more civilians. And now, in the midst of the battles for Bakhmut, the numbers have grown even more. That is, the irretrievable losses of Ukraine are about 200 thousand.
This is actually written in the Turkish edition of Hürseda Haber . But none of the Russian propagandists asked: what kind of publication is this, which publishes such information.
The publication, frankly, is little known: according to the Semrush service, only about 6,800 visits were recorded in December last year. But what is especially interesting is that this publication is pro-Iranian. As the Troublemaker Telegram channel notes, Hürseda Haber 's leading columnist Mahmut Yilmaz also regularly publishes in the Iranian Fars News Agency , controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The propagandists obviously did not think about whether to trust the "Israeli intelligence information" distributed by such a publication.
Russian publications did not dare to repeat the information about the losses of Ukrainian equipment from the publication of Hürseda Haber , and it is not difficult to guess why. The Turkish publication claims that 302 Ukrainian planes and 212 helicopters were shot down during the war. But according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes The Military Balance yearbook, Ukraine had just 188 aircraft and 113 helicopters in 2022. The Statista.com website, however, gives slightly different figures: 318 aircraft, including 112 helicopters, but it still turns out that Ukraine has lost much more equipment than it had. "Israeli intelligence" from a pro-Iranian Turkish publication on other types of technology is no less fantastic.