As the country’s invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, Vladimir Putin’s Russian Army has lost another commander, making him the 15th of Putin’s top military leaders to be killed.
Colonel Alexei Sharov was the latest high-ranking Russian official to perish in what has become the country’s largest loss of military leaders since World War II. Ukrainian armed forces announced his death on social media on Tuesday.
Sharov, the commander of the Russian Marines’ 810th Guards Separate Order of Zhukov Brigade, was reportedly killed in Mariupol, a city where over 100,000 people have been trapped amid an invading Russian siege.
As of midnight on March 19, at least 902 civilians had been killed and 1,459 had been injured in Ukraine, according to the UN human rights office.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, ten million people have been displaced, with nearly 3.4 million fleeing the country.
Russian media reported that they had lost nearly 10,000 troops since the invasion began, but the tabloid paper Komsomolskaya Pravda later stated that they were hacked and that this was not the case.
Since stating on March 2 that 498 servicemen had been killed and 1,597 had been injured, Russia has not officially updated its casualty figures. Since then, its offensive has met with stiff opposition from Ukraine’s army and volunteer defence forces.
Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko, Commander of the 45th Engineering Regiment, died shortly after Sharov.
According to The Sun, Sharov is the fifth colonel to die, bringing the total number of Russian military commanders killed in the invasion to 15. According to Foreign Policy, Moscow has suffered its highest casualty rate among top brass since WWII.
The news comes as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that 100,000 people remain trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol, trapped ‘in inhumane conditions’ while running low on supplies and under constant attack.
In his regular evening address, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stated that one group fleeing along an agreed humanitarian route was’simply captured by the occupiers.’
‘There are about 100,000 people in the city-inhumane conditions, a complete blockade, no food, no water, no medicine, constant shelling,’ he added.
Zelensky also accused Russian forces of not only blocking a humanitarian convoy attempting to transport desperately needed aid to Mariupol, but also seizing 15 of the aid mission’s bus drivers and rescue workers, as well as their vehicles, according to another Ukrainian official.
The Ukrainian president stated that the Russians had agreed to the route ahead of time.
‘We are attempting to organise stable humanitarian corridors for Mariupol residents, but almost all of our efforts have been thwarted by the Russian occupiers, whether through shelling or deliberate terror,’ he added in a nightly video address to the nation.
