They reiterated – and reiterated – reports earlier this week by a Ukrainian journalist that a colonel of the 37th Separate Motorized Rifle Guards Brigade had been destroyed by a tank. Some reports said he died of his injuries. An official said the brigade commander was believed to have been “killed by his own troops” as a “consequence of the scale of the brigade’s casualties” in the fierce fighting. However, while there was some evidence to support the allegation that the commander had been assassinated, it was less clear whether, as Western officials claimed, the colonel had died. On Friday night, they partially withdrew the allegation in the light of conflicting information on social media. They said they were trying to determine if he was alive or dead – and they said the key point was that he was a victim of insurgency, not whether he had been killed or not. The initial report of the uprising was made on Facebook on Wednesday by a Ukrainian journalist, Roman Tsimbalyuk, who said it happened after the unit, which was fighting in Makariv, west of Kiev, had lost “about 50% of its staff”. . “After choosing a convenient moment, during the battle, he ran over the commander standing next to him, injuring both of his legs,” the journalist wrote. The colonel was then taken to a hospital in Belarus. A separate film released by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, shows Commander Yuri Medvedev being transported by medical troops, where he is apparently alive. In it, a Chechen fighter speaks to a soldier on a stretcher with clear leg injuries, saying: “Hold on … How are you?” OKAY? Tell us… “The wounded soldier replies:” I’m fine. Where are you from?” Confirmation of the Western officials’ claim that the colonel had died was limited to the headline of a report on the MailOnline website, which read: of the dead in the unit of PETHANE “. Britain and other Western countries believe that Russian forces are suffering from increasingly poor morale as they suffer heavy losses in battle. The United States has estimated that 7,000 Russians have been killed by an invading force of about 150,000. Western officials believe that about one-sixth or perhaps one-fifth of Russia’s original invading force, which included about 20 regular battalions, is “no longer militarily effective” – ​​a high degree of casualties, reflecting the failed invasion and fierce Ukrainian counterattack. Seven Russian generals were killed in the fighting, which also resulted in many thousands of Ukrainian military deaths and civilian casualties. The latest official United Nations death toll is 1,081, but this is almost certainly underestimated.