The Minister of Foreign Affairs, João Gomes Cravinho, said this Friday that the information of the death of a Portuguese “mercenary”, claimed by Russia this week, “does not deserve any credibility”.
“It is part of Russia’s weapons to launch these ideas. We have no basis for any type of confirmation in this regard”, said the Portuguese official, on the sidelines of the closing session of the Conference Series “Diplomacy and the Independence of Portugal”, at the Palácio da Independência, in Lisbon.
Asked about the number of Portuguese combatants in Ukraine, João Gomes Cravinho recalled that the Government was aware of seven, judging “that some will have already left.”
“The numbers we have are the same as we gave when, last time, Russia also came with statements from Portuguese participants,” he observed, adding that he had “no record of Portuguese being killed in action in Ukraine.”
Russia on Tuesday claimed the deaths of 391 foreign fighters in Ukraine in the past three weeks, including one the Russian Defense Ministry identified as Portuguese.
In addition to the “mercenaries” shot down by Russian forces, the ministry said that in the same period, 240 foreign fighters fled Ukraine and 151 arrived in the country Russia invaded on February 24.
“Over the past three weeks, the number of mercenaries in Ukraine has decreased from 3,221 to 2,741 as a result of offensive actions by units of the Russian Armed Forces and people’s militias of the Lugansk and Donetsk republics,” the Ministry of Defense said. Russian defense in a statement. .
The ministry published on the Telegram social network a list of mercenaries by country, in which it refers to the arrival of 105 from Portugal since the start of the conflict.
Of that total, 20 are listed as dead and another 20 as fled, so 65 would remain in Ukraine, according to data released by Moscow.
Source: Observadora
