 8,500 Russian airborne troops wounded in Ukraine. At least 8,500 members of the Russian airborne forces have been wounded in the year and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine, the elite troops commander said. Airborne forces commander of Russia Mikhail Teplinsky disclosed the figures in a video message congratulating comrades on paratroopers day, which marked 93 years since the founding of the corps. More than 5,000 wounded paratroopers returned to the front after treatment and more than 3,500 of our wounded refused to leave the front line. Teplinsky said. His video address was published by the Defence Ministry run broadcaster Zvezda. Hours later the footage was taken down from both Zvezda's website and its channel on the Telegram messaging app for unexplained reasons according to the Moscow Times' media outlet. The independent investigative news outlet, Agents Voh, which spotted the video's removal speculated that the footage was removed because it disclosed information the Defence Ministry did not want to be made public. Teplinsky did not say how many airborne forces troops had been killed in the war. The Defence Ministry last disclosed its overall casualty members in Ukraine in September 2022, saying 5,937 soldiers had been killed in combat, a figure believed to be much higher. Open source intelligence analyst Kirill Mikhailov told Agents Voh that Teplinsky's figures suggest that several thousand Russian paratroopers may have been killed in Ukraine. An independent Tally based on open source data by the BBC's Russian service and the news website Media Zona estimates that at least 1,832 paratroopers died in Ukraine as of July 30th.