Zelensky Gives Rare Insight Into Ukraine's Death Toll

Approximately 31,000 soldiers have died fighting for Ukraine against Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday, as Ukraine passes into the third year of full-scale war against Moscow.

"Each person is a very big loss for us. 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in this war," the Ukrainian leader said in a rare statement addressing Kyiv's losses. "It is very painful for us.

"I won't say how many wounded (Ukrainians) there are because Russia will know how many people have left the battlefield."

Death tolls and casualty counts are notoriously difficult to confirm. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv typically acknowledge their own casualties, and experts have suggested that both sides inflate the figures of their adversaries.

In August 2022, Ukraine's former top soldier, Valery Zaluzhny, said just under 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died fighting Russia. In August 2023, U.S. officials told The New York Times that around 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with up to 120,000 wounded.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in late 2023 that Ukraine had sustained 383,000 casualties since February 2022, according to Russian state media reporting. Russia's Defense Ministry said on Sunday Ukraine had lost 810 fighters over the past day.

This figure is inflated, and too high to be a true count of Ukrainian casualties, Nick Reynolds, a research fellow for land warfare at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Newsweek last week. But it has nonetheless been a "very, very painful war for the Ukrainian people," he added.

The Ukrainian leader's comments come as Kyiv appeals for more military aid from its Western backers, including the U.S., with a $60 billion package still stalled in Congress. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said on Sunday that around half of Western-committed aid to Ukraine does not arrive on time, adding: "Whenever a commitment doesn't come on time, we lose people, we lose territory."

Zelensky said on Sunday that 180,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war, and that Russia had suffered 500,000 casualties overall. Figures released by Ukraine's military on Sunday put Russia's casualty count at 409,820, including 810 casualties in the past 24 hours.

In late January, Britain's armed forces minister, James Heappey, told U.K. lawmakers that Russia had sustained around 350,000 casualties in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of mercenaries serving with the Wagner Group—which were influential in operations to take the Donetsk city of Bakhmut in May 2023—were also killed and injured, Heappey said.

Casualties and losses have picked up several times during the two years of war, corresponding with drawn-out battles for key settlements. In early May 2023, the U.S. estimated that Russia had suffered 100,000 casualties in just five months as fighting intensified around Bakhmut, including around 20,000 fighters killed.

Russia launched its offensive on the strategic Donetsk city of Avdiivka on October 10, 2023, starting a grueling battle lasting more than four months until Ukrainian forces withdrew from the city on February 17, 2024.

During this time, Russia's forces lost more than 47,000 troops, Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of Ukraine's Tavria grouping of forces covering Avdiivka, said earlier this month.

Of these, around 17,000 soldiers were killed, Tavria spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovii later said.

Moscow "took huge casualties in order to take Avdiivka," Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now a distinguished fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis, previously told Newsweek.

Update 2/25/24, 12 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.