Approximately 31,000 soldiers have died fighting for Ukraine against Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.
“Each person is a very big loss for us. 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in this war… It is very painful for us,” the Ukrainian leader said in a rare statement addressing Kyiv’s losses.
“I won’t say how many wounded (Ukrainians) there are because Russia will know how many people have left the battlefield.”
Zelensky added that 180,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war, and that Russia had suffered 500,000 casualties overall.
Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
Death tolls and casualty counts are notoriously difficult to confirm. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv typically acknowledge their own casualties, and experts have suggested that both sides inflate the figures of their adversaries.
In August 2023, U.S. officials told The New York Times that around 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with up to 120,000 wounded.
This is a breaking story and will be updated shortly with additional information.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.