A RUSSIAN colonel has been killed after he reportedly “stepped on a mine” while visiting troops in Ukraine in order to boost morale.

The death is the latest humiliation for Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin having seen a number of his top officers killed in the Ukraine war.

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Arman Ospanov, who was the head of the armoured service of the Russian Airborne Forces, had gone to the occupied territories in Ukraine to raise morale.

However, having arrived he then stepped on a mine and was killed, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, citing Russian Telegram channels.

Another account on X, formerly Twitter – Russian Officers killed in Ukraine – has reported the same news.

It says it sources its information from funeral notices, obituaries, Russian news, monuments and memorial plaques.

However, a slightly different account of his death was given by another X account – Status-6.

It said Ospanov had been visiting the 104 Guards Air Assault Division near Kozachi Laheri in Kherson Oblast on January 6.

According to a source, Ospanov had been delivering spare cables to the BREM armoured recovery vehicle and when he arrived the group came under fire from Ukrainian artillery and the colonel was “killed instantly”.

Reports say that Sergeant Alexander Krasnov from the airborne division was also killed.

The total number of Russian military personnel that have been killed since the invasion of Ukraine is put at 365,170, although this has not been independently verified.

A large number of senior Russian military figures have been killed since Putin sent his forces into Ukraine.

Major General Vladimir Zavadsky, deputy commander of Russia’s 14th Army Corps, was killed in Ukraine in December 2023.

The investigative news outlet iStories said Zavadsky was the seventh Major General whose death had been confirmed by Russia, and the 12th senior officer overall to be reported dead since the start of the war.

In August last year Police Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Chernykh was gardening at his country home in Shchetinovka, Russia, just 1,000ft from the Ukraine border when he was killed in a drone strike.

In June, Major-General Sergey Goryachev, 52, was struck and killed by a long-range British-supplied Storm Shadow missile in Zaporizhzhia region, according to Moscow war sources. 

In another setback for the dictator, Lt-Col Viktor Fursov, an army intelligence officer, 37, died during a combat mission, although the circumstances of his death have not been disclosed. 

Major-General Dmitry Ulyanov, 44, had only recently returned to active service after retirement as a commander when he was killed in February last year.

Col. Mikhail Nagamov, 41, commander of a sapper regiment of the Western Military District, died in Ukraine on April 13, 2022.

Major General Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of the 8th Combined Arms Army was killed in battle the same month.

Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky was reportedly shot dead by a sniper at the battle for Hostomel Airfield about 30 miles outside the capital Kyiv in early March.

And General Magomed Tushaev died when his Chechen special forces column, including 56 tanks, was obliterated near Hostomel, north-east of the city.

Major-General Oleg Mityaev, 47, died in Mariupol as well as Lieutenant General Yakov Rezantsev who also died in fighting.

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