According to an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the country has lost 10,000 to 13,000 soldiers since the start of the war on February 24.
Source AFP
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NNine months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, kyiv has counted its deaths in the thousands. Thursday 1is December, an adviser to the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak thus affirmed to have “official estimates from the general staff (…). They range from 10,000 (…) to 13,000 [soldats] dead,” he told Ukrainian channel Channel 24. According to him, the head of state will make the official data public “when the time is right.”
When Russian forces fought in June to completely take over the Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky said his country was losing “60 to 100 soldiers a day, killed in action, and around 500 people injured in action”. In the opposing camp, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu assured in September that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict on February 24.
Numbers probably understated
The two adversaries are suspected of minimizing the scale of their human losses to avoid weighing on the morale of their troops. The US Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, estimated in November that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or injured since the invasion and that the losses were probably of the same order on the Ukrainian side. These figures – which cannot be confirmed from independent sources – are the most accurate provided to date by the US government.
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Several thousand civilians have also been killed in the most violent armed conflict in Europe for decades.