As of: February 26, 2024, 11:53 a.m
By: Christian Stör
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Press
Split
On February 24, 2022, troops from Russia invaded Ukraine.
The invaded country lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the two years of the Ukrainian war.
© Roman Pilipey/afp
The losses in the Ukraine war are shockingly high.
President Zelenskyj gives concrete figures for the first time.
Russia continues to remain silent.
Kiev – The losses in the Ukraine war are enormous – on both sides.
But what do the numbers actually look like?
It's hard to say, as both sides release little information about their own losses to avoid jeopardizing troop morale and public support.
But now Volodymyr Zelenskyj has given official casualty figures for the Ukrainian military for the first time.
At a press conference on Sunday (February 25), the Ukrainian president said that 31,000 soldiers had died since the start of the war.
“This is a big loss for us,” said Zelensky.
Zelenskyj provides information about his own losses in the Ukraine war for the first time
Zelensky rejected the loss figures cited so far.
It is not 300,000 or 150,000, he said, as Russian President Vladimir Putin “and his circle of liars claim,” said Zelensky.
In December 2023, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to the
Tass
news agency , that 383,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded since the start of the war.
Zelenskyj described the information from Moscow as “nonsense”.
Zelensky did not want to comment on the number of wounded.
According to the Ukrainian president, this could benefit the Russian military.
Ukraine had previously kept the number of its own victims under wraps.
Kiev announced the last official figures in the summer of 2022.
Accordingly, around 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the Ukraine war by August 2022.
Subsequently, estimates of the number of victims in the Ukraine war often came from foreign secret services.
Zelensky
also said that tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians had died in Russian-occupied territories, according to
the Wall Street Journal .
“I don’t know how many of these dead were murdered, tortured and deported,” he said.
We will only find out about this later.
According to the latest figures from the United Nations, at least 10,000 civilians have lost their lives in Ukraine, including more than 570 children.
Experts assume that the actual number of victims may be higher than reported by the United Nations.
Russia also keeps figures on casualties in the Ukraine war top secret
Russia, in turn, keeps the numbers of its own victims under wraps.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu only said in September 2022 that 5,937 Russian soldiers had died.
Zelensky put Russian losses at 180,000 dead and 500,000 wounded during his press conference.
The number of casualties he cited on the Russian side is significantly higher than the daily updated count by the Ukrainian armed forces, which put the total number of Russian casualties at 410,700 dead and wounded on Monday morning.
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According to US intelligence, at least 315,000 soldiers have been killed or injured on the Russian side.
An insider told the
Reuters
news agency in December , citing a US intelligence report.
On January 29, in a written response to a parliamentary question, James Heappey, Minister of State for the British Armed Forces, put the figure at more than 350,000 dead and injured on the Russian side.
Figures for casualties in the Ukraine war can only be estimated
On February 21, the BBC's
Russian-language service
and Russian media outlet
Mediazona
reported that they had identified the names of more than 45,000 Russian soldiers who had died since February 2022.
This only includes the soldiers “who were recorded in publicly available data – mainly obituaries”.
So there could easily be twice as many.
In fact, the independent media portals
Medusa
and
Mediazona
estimate the number of Russian soldiers killed so far at 75,000.
The Russian side had repeatedly said that Western estimates of the number of Russian deaths were greatly exaggerated.
The only thing that is certain is that false numbers are given for propaganda purposes.
(cs with agencies)