By AP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia launched its full invasion.
Zelenskyy said the figure was much lower than estimates given by Russian President Vladimir Putin's government.
"31,000 Ukrainian servicemen have died in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000, not whatever Putin and his circle of liars have been saying. However, each of those losses is a great sacrifice for us," Zelenskyy declared in the 'Ukraine, year 2024' forum in kyiv.
He added that he would not release figures for soldiers wounded or captured, and that "tens of thousands of civilians" have been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but clarified that exact figures would not be available until the war ends.
“We don't know how many of our civilians they killed. “Not us,”
he stated.
It is the first time kyiv has confirmed the casualty figure since Moscow launched its invasion on February 24, 2022.
In August 2023, The New York Times reported that Ukrainian forces had suffered 70,000 dead and between 100,000 and 120,000 wounded since the start of the war, citing unnamed U.S. officials who spoke directly to Times reporters.
Russia has provided few official casualty figures.
The most recent data from the Ministry of Defense, published in January 2023, pointed to just over 6,000 deaths, although reports from US and British authorities put that figure much higher.
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A US intelligence report declassified in mid-December 2023 estimated that 315,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded in Ukraine.
If accurate, the figure represents 87% of the approximately 360,000 troops Russia had before the war, according to the report.
The independent Russian media outlet Mediazona published on Saturday that around 75,000 Russian men died in 2022 and 2023 fighting in the war.
A joint investigation published by Mediazona and Meduza, another independent Russian news site, indicates that the pace of Russian losses in Ukraine is not slowing and that Moscow is losing around 120 men per day.