43,000 dead, Volodymyr Zelensky says in rare update
In a rare acknowledgment of the extent of the country’s toll, Volodymyr Zelensky said some 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the Russian invasion began.
Ukraine’s president said in a social media post that another 370,000 people were injured, although this figure includes soldiers who were wounded more than once.
He also claimed that 198,000 Russian soldiers were killed and another 550,000 wounded.
The BBC has not been able to confirm these claims.
Both Russia and Ukraine have frequently stopped publishing casualty figures and are thought to be underestimating the true cost of the conflict.
A recent Reuters report, citing an unnamed U.S. intelligence source, said the war has resulted in 315,000 Russian military casualties, nearly 90% of the number first deployed at the start of the conflict.
Meanwhile, a New York Times report in August quoted U.S. officials as saying that the war in Ukraine had left 70,000 dead and as many as 120,000 injured.
Before Sunday, Zelensky last updated Ukrainian casualty figures in February, when he put the death toll in Ukraine at 31,000.
The Ukrainian president is believed to have been forced to make the latest admission after incoming US President Donald Trump posted on social media that 600,000 Russians had been killed or wounded, while the figure in Ukraine was 400,000. Trump did not say where the numbers came from.
Although estimates of the war’s casualties vary, there is consensus that Russia’s casualty figures Much higher than Ukraine due to “meat grinder” tactics.
Recent developments in the war have only increased the death toll.
Since the beginning of the year, Russian forces have continued their gradual advance along the eastern front, seizing and retaking approximately 2,350 square kilometers (907 square miles) of territory in eastern Ukraine and the Kursk region in western Russia.
Ukrainian forces still control a sliver of Russian territory after launching a surprise offensive against Russia in August.
The British Ministry of Defense said Russian casualties in November were 45,680, the highest number recorded in any month since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
According to the latest estimates from the UK Defense Intelligence Agency, Russia is suffering an average of 1,523 casualties per day.
According to reports, on November 28, the death toll in Russia exceeded 2,000 in a single day. This was the first time this happened.
Officials said the figures were based on open source material and were sometimes cross-referenced with classified data.
Ukraine is not allowed to publish its own military casualties, so there are no official estimates for the past few months.
The Russian Defense Ministry said more than 38,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed or wounded in Kursk alone, a figure that could not be confirmed.
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and occupied the country’s southern and eastern territories.
Zelensky mentioned Ukraine’s war dead in a broader post about prospects for an eventual end to the war.
This comes after French President Macron and Trump held talks in Paris on Saturday. The US president-elect has repeatedly said he wants to end the war quickly, tapping into sentiment among about a quarter of Americans who believe the United States is providing too much support to Ukraine.
During the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in one day,” but has yet to specify how he plans to do that.
Zelensky emphasized in the post that any peace agreement must be backed by effective international guarantees for his country’s security.
He said he told Macron and Trump that Kyiv needed a “lasting peace” that Moscow would not “destroy in a few years.”
