As of: February 27, 2024, 5:11 a.m
By: Christian Stör
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Troops from Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The country has since lost tens of thousands of soldiers in two years of war in Ukraine.
© Roman Pilipey/afp
The figures for casualties in the Ukraine war are frightening.
For the first time, President Zelenskyj is making concrete statements.
Russia remains silent.
Kiev – The effects of the war in Ukraine are devastating, and the losses on both sides are significant.
But exact numbers are difficult to determine as both parties release scant information about their own losses to avoid undermining troop morale and public support.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has now announced official casualty figures for the Ukrainian military for the first time.
At a press conference on February 25, he announced that 31,000 soldiers had died since the start of the war.
“This is a big loss for us,” Zelensky said.
For the first time, Zelenskyj provides information about his own losses in the Ukraine war
Zelensky rejected previous loss figures that had been circulated.
He clarified that it was not 300,000 or 150,000, as Russian President Vladimir Putin “and his circle of liars” claimed.
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 these statements from Moscow as nonsense.
The Ukrainian president did not want to comment on the number of wounded because it could benefit the Russian military.
Ukraine had previously kept the number of its own victims secret.
The last official figures were published in summer 2022.
As of August 2022, around 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the Ukraine War.
Later estimates of casualty numbers in the Ukraine war often came from foreign intelligence services.
In addition, according to the Wall Street Journal
, Zelensky said
that tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians had died in Russian-occupied territories.
“I don’t know how many of these dead were murdered, tortured and deported,” he said.
The exact numbers would only be known later.
According to the latest figures from the United Nations, at least 10,000 civilians, including more than 570 children, have lost their lives in Ukraine.
Experts suspect that the actual number of victims may be higher than reported by the United Nations.
Russia keeps figures on its own losses in the Ukraine war top secret
Russia also keeps the numbers of its own losses strictly secret.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu only announced in September 2022 that 5,937 Russian soldiers had died.
During his press conference, Zelensky estimated Russian losses at 180,000 dead and 500,000 wounded.
These casualty figures on the Russian side that he cited are significantly higher than the daily updated count by the Ukrainian armed forces, which put the total number of Russian losses on Monday morning at 410,700 dead and wounded.
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US intelligence estimates that at least 315,000 soldiers have been killed or injured on the Russian side.
This was reported in December by a Reuters source, 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.
Exact figures for losses in the Ukraine war can still only be estimated
The exact number of 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 have died since February 2022.
This only includes soldiers recorded in publicly available data - primarily 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 has repeatedly claimed that Western estimates of the number of Russian deaths are greatly exaggerated.
The only thing that is certain is that false numbers are also given for propaganda purposes.
(cs with agencies)
Editor Christian Stör wrote this article and then used an AI language model for optimization at his own discretion. All information has been carefully checked.
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