Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

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-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy said that the number was far lower than estimates given by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.

“31,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000, not whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have been lying about. But nevertheless, each of these losses is a great sacrifice for us”, Zelenskyy said at the “Ukraine. Year 2024” forum in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian leader said that he wouldn’t disclose the number of troops that were wounded or missing. He also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but said that no exact figures would be available until the war was over.

      • @Thrashy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22•4 months ago

        Ukraine claims north of 400k, which is undoubtedly optimistic, but allied intelligence agencies have previously floated numbers around 1/2 to 2/3rds of Ukraine’s public claims, which is still an utterly appalling number of dead Russian men. Russia’s tactical approach from the start has been more or less to treat their mobilized conscripts as expendable. For politically-important objectives their commanders have been perfectly happy to dump fresh meat into the metaphorical meat grinder until the gears jam, and then claim victory.

        • @nexusband@lemmy.worldEnglish
          22•4 months ago

          Casualties, but apparently the deaths are more than 50% confirmed - in the end, it doesn’t matter though, because russian field medicine is such a shit show, I highly doubt a single one of those 450k+ will ever fight again. So they are the same.

        • brianorcaEnglish
          4•4 months ago

          Russia standard procedures seems to be to put a bandaid on the wounded and send them back, or else leave them where they lay. They are not using the modern battlefield medicine practices that resulted in higher ratios of wounded to dead in most modern Western warfare.