Zelensky reveals data on casualties in Ukrainian army fighting against Russia

As the Reuters news agency reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed casualties of the Ukrainian military during the war against Russia. According to him, the country has lost 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers. This is the first such statement since the end of 2022.

As the media outlet noted, Zelensky refused to reveal the number of wounded during his press conference in Kyiv as this may help the Russians in their military offensive planning.

Ukraine hasn’t reported its casualties since the end of 2022, when Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential advisor, said that Ukraine had lost 13,000 soldiers since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

Also, Zelensky told journalists that in turn, Russia has lost about 180,000 soldiers.

However, Russia doesn’t reveal any information about its military casualties which it considers secret. Both sides depict the casualties of the other side as huge.

According to Mediazone and the Russian service of the BBC, which count Russian casualties based on open sources, there were more than 75,000 dead Russian military personnel as of January 1, 2024, excluding soldiers of the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (DNR and LNR).

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, to «denazify» and «demilitarize» Ukraine. At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of DNR and LNR (unrecognized by Kazakhstan and the entire world).