Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy said that the number was far 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, not whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have been lying about. But nevertheless, each of these losses is a great sacrifice for us”, Zelenskyy said at the “Ukraine. Year 2024” forum in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian leader said that he wouldn’t disclose the number of troops that were wounded or missing. He also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but said that no exact figures would be available until the war was over.

    • nexusband@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      Casualties, but apparently the deaths are more than 50% confirmed - in the end, it doesn’t matter though, because russian field medicine is such a shit show, I highly doubt a single one of those 450k+ will ever fight again. So they are the same.

    • brianorca@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      4 months ago

      Russia standard procedures seems to be to put a bandaid on the wounded and send them back, or else leave them where they lay. They are not using the modern battlefield medicine practices that resulted in higher ratios of wounded to dead in most modern Western warfare.