A Russian general was “almost certainly” killed in a strike on a command post in southern Ukraine this week, the British Defense Ministry said Friday.
Major General Sergei Goryachev would be “the first Russian general confirmed killed in Ukraine since the start of 2023,” the British military said in an intelligence update on Twitter.
Goryachev is thought to have died in a rocket attack in the so-called “Vremivka ledge” in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is partially occupied by Moscow.
Russian war correspondent Yury Kotenok first reported the general’s death on Monday.
“The joint military force believes the army has lost one of the brightest and most effective military leaders who combined the highest professionalism and personal courage today,” Kotenok wrote in a social media post, which has since been deleted.
When journalists asked the Kremlin about Goryachev’s reported death, it redirected questions to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russian military authorities have not yet commented on the reports.
If confirmed, Goryachev would be the fifth publicly known major general to have been killed in the nearly 16 months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a tally by the independent news website Mediazona.
Western intelligence has placed the overall death toll of Russian generals at more than 20 by February 2023.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is said to have estimated almost 110,000 casualties among Russian troops by February, according to leaked U.S. intelligence documents.
Russia’s military has not updated its official death toll since September, when it said that 5,937 servicemen had been killed in Ukraine.
