Some 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in a rare acknowledgment of the country’s toll.
Ukraine’s president said in a social media post that 370,000 injuries had been reported, but that figure included soldiers who had been wounded multiple times, some of them with minor injuries. It is said.
He also claimed that 198,000 Russian soldiers were killed and another 550,000 wounded.
The BBC has not been able to confirm figures for either side.
Kiev and Moscow regularly publish estimates of the other side’s losses, but are reluctant to detail their own losses.
The new figures mark a significant increase in the number of Ukrainian deaths since the beginning of the year.
President Zelenskiy last issued an update on Ukraine’s casualties in February, when he put the death toll at 31,000.
Ukraine’s president made the confession after US President-elect Donald Trump wrote on social media that Ukraine had “ridiculously lost” 400,000 soldiers, while nearly 600,000 Russians had been killed or wounded. It is believed that he was forced to do so. President Trump did not reveal the source of these numbers.
The president-elect, who has long made clear he wants to end the war, said too many lives had been “unnecessarily wasted.”
President Zelenskiy’s estimate of Russia’s losses is similar to that of senior Western officials, who estimate that Russia has suffered about 800,000 casualties.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russia suffered 45,680 casualties in November alone, more than in any month since the invasion began in February 2022.
According to the latest estimates from the British Defense Intelligence Agency, an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers are killed or injured each day.
According to the magazine, on November 28, Russia lost more than 2,000 people in a single day, the first time this had happened.
Moscow disputes these figures. The Kremlin claimed in a statement that Ukraine’s losses were “many times greater” than Russia’s.
Outside Russia, the consensus is that Russian casualties are far higher than Ukrainian casualties due to Russia’s “meat grinder” tactics.
Due to recent developments in the war, the death toll will only increase.
Russian forces have continued to make gradual advances along the eastern front, capturing and retaking approximately 2,350 square kilometers (907 square miles) of territory in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s western Kursk region since the beginning of the year.
Ukrainian forces continue to control parts of Russian territory they captured in a surprise attack on Russia in August.
The Russian Ministry of Defense says more than 38,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or injured in Kursk alone, but the number cannot be confirmed.
Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Eight years later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, seizing territory in the country’s south and east.
President Zelenskiy mentioned Ukraine’s war dead in a wide-ranging post about the prospects for an eventual end to the war.
This follows a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and President Trump in Paris on Saturday, which revealed that about a quarter of Americans believe the US is providing too much aid to Ukraine. I’m trying to use it.
President Trump repeatedly said during the campaign that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in “one day,” but he has yet to say how he intends to end it.
In his post, Zelenskiy stressed that any peace agreement must be backed by effective international guarantees for the country’s security.
He said he had told Macron and Trump that Kiev needed “lasting peace” and that Russia “will not destroy it within a few years.”
In response to President Trump’s call for an immediate ceasefire, the Kremlin said it was ready to negotiate but that the conditions for a cessation of hostilities were set by Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.
His demands included that Ukraine cede more territory and abandon its ambitions to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Kiev rejected.
