STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT. Up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the Russian invasion in February. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, estimated that 10,000 to 13,000 servicemen and women have been lost to fighting. Thursday’s figure is the first official estimate of the dead since August when the head of Ukraine’s armed forces said nearly 9,000 military personnel had been killed. Two months before Zelenskyy said that “60 to 100 [Ukrainian] soldiers a day were killed in action”, with around 500 injured, when Russian forces were pushing to take over the Lugansk region in the east.
The Ukraine war is the most deadly armed conflict to break out in Europe in decades, with several thousand civilians also dying as a result of the violence. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed or maimed in the war, and are now facing a winter without heat, power or water after Moscow pounded the country’s power stations and energy infrastructure.
Russia has remained tight-lipped about the number of its military personnel that have been killed. Moscow has put the figure in the thousands, though the UK Ministry of Defence estimates some 25,000 Russians have died. Both sides are suspected of minimising their losses to not dent the morale of troops and the wider public.
Ukraine’s position on the battlefield has now improved, with its armed forces making sweeping gains and recapturing the strategic southern city of Kherson in November.
In September, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict on February 24. This is far lower than estimates that have been put forward by western analysts.
Last month, the US’s top general estimated that Russia’s military had seen more than 100,000 of its soldiers killed or wounded in Ukraine, adding that Kyiv’s armed forces have “probably” suffered in a similar way. Both Russia and Ukraine are suspected of minimising their losses on order to avoid undermining the morale of their troops.
