We reported earlier that our colleagues at BBC Russian had compiled a list of 557 confirmed Russian military deaths in the Ukraine invasion, mentioning that Russia’s defence ministry has so far only once provided fatality figures – 498 deaths as of 2 March.

All that suddenly changed in the last few hours, or so it seemed…

The staunchly pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) published an article quoting the ministry as saying 9,861 Russian servicemen had died, a figure which exceeds even US intelligence estimates of Russian fatalities.

It gave the number of wounded as 16,153.

Minutes later, this part of the article disappeared from the page, but we were able to take screen grabs of the relevant paragraphs.

KP editor Vladimir Sungorkin subsequently told the BBC the information had been the result of a hack, and said the paper will post an explanation later.