[ad_1]
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia’s attack, it said on Sunday full scale attack,
Zelensky said the number was much 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, whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have lied about. But nevertheless, each of these losses is a great sacrifice for us”, Zelensky said in “Ukraine”. Year 2024” Forum in Kyiv,
The Ukrainian leader said he would not disclose the number of injured or missing soldiers. He also said that “thousands of civilians” had been killed in Ukrainian-occupied territories, but said no accurate figures would be available until the war was over.
“We don’t know how many of our citizens they killed. We don’t,” he said.
It is the first time that Kiev has confirmed the number of its losses since the start of Russia’s full-scale war on February 24, 2022.
Russia has provided few official casualty figures. The most recent data from the Ministry of Defense, published in January 2023, pointed to more than 6,000 deaths, although reports from US and UK officials put the number significantly higher.
A US intelligence report made public in mid-December 2023 estimated that 315,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in Ukraine. According to the report, if accurate, this figure would represent 87% of the approximately 360,000 troops Russia had before the war.
Independent Russian news outlet Mediazona said on Saturday that some 75,000 Russian men could die fighting in the war in 2022 and 2023.
A joint investigation published by Mediazona and Meduza, another independent Russian news site, indicates that the rate of Russia’s losses in Ukraine is not slowing and that Moscow is losing about 120 people a day.
,
Follow AP’s coverage of the war https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
[ad_2]
Source link