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"We now know for sure that the great fire of the Marywilska shopping centre in Warsaw was caused by arson ordered by the Russian special services," Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X. "Some of the perpetrators have already been detained, all the others are identified and searched for."

This week, the world watched in anticipation for Russia’s Victory Day parade after President Volodymyr Zelensky commented that he could not guarantee the safety of those attending. Meanwhile, the European Union moves one step forward to banning Russian gas from the European continent. It is also revealed this week that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fallen out of step with the White House.

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Mediazona confirms identities of over 25,000 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine

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Through open source research, Mediazona, a Russian independent media outlet, together with BBC Russia, confirmed the names of 25,528 Russian soldiers who had been killed in the past 15 months of the full-scale war. The media organizations carry out a name-by-name count of the dead.

Since the media's latest update on June 4, a total of 1,058 names have been added to the list of casualties. The journalists and volunteers now have also identified around 4,721 former prisoners and over 1,853 mercenaries who have been killed in Ukraine.

Mediazona explains that obituaries published in Russian newspapers and online rarely specify where exactly a fighter died. Moreover, a significant portion of the data comes not from public reports, but from cemeteries across Russia that volunteers visit.

The report also indicating that Russia's Ministry of Defense is discouraging regional authorities from publishing obituaries for soldiers killed in Ukraine in order to obstruct research on Russian military deaths.  

Fifteen months into the war, the number of Russian casualties verified through open sources has long since surpassed the officially confirmed number of deaths of Soviet soldiers during the nine-year war in Afghanistan. Over 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in Afghanistan from 1979 until 1989.

General Staff: Russian forces fail to advance in the east, conduct 37 airstrikes across Ukraine
Russian forces tried to advance toward the towns of Kupiansk, Lyman, Avdiivka, Marinka, and Shakhtarsk in eastern and southeastern Ukraine but failed to make any headway on June 17, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
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Rachel Amran

News Editor

Rachel Amran is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked on the Europe and Central Asia team of Human Rights Watch investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Rachel holds a master's degree in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Regional Studies from Columbia University.

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