Around 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in Russia’s full-scale invasion since February 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky said in a rare update on war casualties.
The Ukrainian president said 370,000 injuries had been reported in a post on his social media and said that this tally included soldiers who had been hurt more than once and some of the injuries were said to be minor.
“Since the start of the full-scale war, Ukraine has lost 43,000 soldiers killed in action on the battlefield. There have been 370,000 cases of medical assistance for the wounded. It also needs to be mentioned that in our army approximately half of the soldiers wounded in action are later returning to the battlefield, and that our data also includes light or repeat injuries,” he said on X.
Additionally, he said around 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and a further 550,000 wounded.
“Our people are defending their homes at the cost of their lives, and every life of our soldiers and our civilians is precious to us,” he said in the statement.
Russia and Ukraine have not previously shared the total military losses in the continuing war and treat the number as a state secret.
The latest information from Mr Zelensky comes as a rare admission in the recent times with the incoming US president Donald Trump calling for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness”
Mr Zelensky also said Russia’s losses have surged in the last few months. “Since September of this year, Russia has been losing people on the battlefield in a ratio of 5 and even 6 to 1 for us. This is how they want to seize more land before the world’s pressure on them can become unbearable,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
In his previous update on Ukraine’s war casualties in February this year, Mr Zelensky said the country had seen 31,000 deaths.
This comes as on the battlefield, Russian forces kept up their grinding advance in eastern Ukraine, taking the village of Blahodatne, according to a statement on Sunday by Russia’s defense ministry.
If confirmed, the territorial gain would bring Russian forces a step closer toward capturing the town of Velyka Novosilka and disrupting a key logistics route for the Ukrainian army, military analysts said.
