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A Kremlin official and relative of Vladimir Putin has boasted that Russia has become a world leader in making prosthetic limbs.
Deputy defence minister Anna Tsivilyova, said to be the daughter of Putin’s cousin, said Russia had achieved “huge breakthroughs” in prosthetic innovation due to the Ukraine war.
She told the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok: “It is precisely the participants in the special military operation who have allowed us to reach such a priority flagship level,” speaking of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We are probably leading in this direction now.”
Russia issued 60,000 more prosthetic limbs in 2024 compared to 2021, a 65 per cent increase, according to its government data.
More than one million Russian troops have likely been killed or wounded since February 2022, when the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence. In March, it said that up to 250,000 Russians had been killed in Ukraine, with 35,140 killed or injured in February 2025 alone.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy told British broadcaster Piers Morgan in February that 45,100 Ukrainian troops had been killed, and 390,000 injured.
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Andrii Rubliuk, a senior sergeant with a Ukrainian intelligence unit, lost both of his arms and a leg in battlefield (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
Ms Tsivilyova accidentally revealed the number of search appeals by relatives of soldiers who submitted DNA samples last December.
She said the government received 48,000 requests from relatives of Russian troops who were trying to trace soldiers, dead or missing. The number of casualties has so far been treated as a state secret by Russia, which hasn’t publicised its military losses.
The UK named Ms Tsivilyova as “Putin’s first cousin once removed”. The Foreign Office imposed sanctions subject to asset freezes and travel bans on her in June 2022.