MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/. Polish officials reluctantly recognize that some Poles fight on the side of the Ukrainian armed forces, but the mercenaries’ deaths are concealed from the general public, Russia’s ambassador to Warsaw Sergey Andreyev has said.

"This issue [the deaths of Poles fighting on the side of the Ukrainian military] is painstakingly swept under the carpet by both officials and the leading media. Some reluctantly admit that, of course, there are ‘Polish volunteers’ there, fighting "for an independent Ukraine against Russian aggression." The implication is that some of them die, but information about mass deaths is carefully hushed up," he said on the Soloviev Live TV channel.

On March 14, the Russian Defense Ministry released statistics showing that 13,387 mercenaries from various countries had arrived in Ukraine since the beginning of the special military operation. The Russian Armed Forces have eliminated 5,962 of them. The largest group of mercenaries - 2,960 - is from Poland and 1,497 of them have been eliminated.