Russia Has Caused 17,831 Civilian Casualties in Ukraine: U.N.

Civilian casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war are approaching 18,000, according to recently released figures from the United Nations (U.N.).

The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Tuesday that at least 6,884 civilians had been killed and 10,947 injured in Ukraine from the start of the Russian invasion on February 24 up to December 26. The casualties include 165 deaths and 516 injuries recorded in December, most of which were caused by "the use of explosive weapons with wide area effects."

"OHCHR believes that the actual figures are considerably higher, as the receipt of information from some locations where intense hostilities have been going on has been delayed and many reports are still pending corroboration," OHCHR said in a news release. "This concerns, for example, Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), Lysychansk, Popasna, and Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where there are allegations of numerous civilian casualties."

The agency said that the confirmed dead included 2,719 men, 1,832 women and 1,904 adults whose sex could not be determined. At least 429 civilian children also perished, including 175 girls, 216 boys and 38 whose sex was unknown.

Casualties were heaviest in the Donbas quadrant, which encompasses Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions, two of the four regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally declared to be annexed for Russia in September.

Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at the think tank Chatham House, told Newsweek that the confirmed deaths tallied by the U.N. and the official count from the Ukrainian government—which claims over 8,000 civilians dead and over 11,000 wounded—are likely low.

"Kyiv has no access to Russian occupied territories," Lutsevych said. "For example, Mariupol had huge civilian casualties. And now Russia is destroying such evidence ... It is only at the end of this horrific war that we will know the real scale of losses."

The updated U.N. statistics were released on the same day that Ukrainian Health Minister Viktor Liashko said that Russian military "terrorists" targeted a maternity hospital in the city of Kherson with bombs, although no casualties were recorded.

Russia has faced accusations of targeting civilian sites since the beginning of the war. Moscow has largely denied any responsibility for related casualties, while blaming Ukrainian forces for allegedly targeting their own citizens instead.

Last week, Putin accused Ukraine of "directly" targeting Donetsk with shelling and causing civilian casualties, while lamenting that "not a single foreign media outlet or human rights organization has broken the silence on this issue."

Putin said that he believed "99 percent" of Russian citizens were "ready to sacrifice everything for the Motherland" in a Russian state television interview on Christmas Day.

The Ukrainian government has claimed that over 100,000 Russian troops have been killed since the beginning of the war. Russia does not routinely release soldier casualty figures. Newsweek has not independently verified Ukraine's claim.

The exact number of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the conflict is also unclear. Ukrainian officials denounced a European Union estimate of 100,000 troops, while estimating that only 13,000 of the country's soldiers had been killed.

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment.

Update 12/28, 4:23 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to include comment from Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House think tank.