The Russian government admitted Monday to severely underreporting the death toll from the coronavirus within the country, AFP reported.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova revealed the extent of the underreporting in response to a report by the Rosstat statistics agency that deaths in Russia from January-November are up 229,700 compared to 2019.
“More than 81 percent of this increase in mortality over this period is due to COVID," Golikova said.
Russia had previously claimed to have suffered only 55,000 deaths from the coronavirus, with President Vladimir Putin boasting of how Russia was handling the pandemic "better" than western countries.
However, if Golikova's statistics are accurate, the true number of fatalities is more than three times higher, about 186,000.
This would make Russia the nation with the third-highest number of total fatalities from the coronavirus, behind the US with 335,000 and Brazil with 191,000.