© Heidi Levine for The Washington Post Damaged trees and Russian military equipment near a Ukraine military position in Irpin on April 2,2022. Soon after the invasion began, a hashtag war slogan popped up everywhere in Russia: “We don’t leave ours behind.” But many were. He said his government’s figure of 18,600 Russian dead was based on Ukrainian reports from the battlefield and intercepted Russian military communications. Ukraine tried to return the bodies of 3,000 Russian service members on the third day of the war, he said. News programs aired footage of Russian soldiers burning alive in armored vehicles.
