After two years of secrecy, Volodymyr Zelensky has finally revealed the number of fallen Ukrainian soldiers. ‘31,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, as Putin and his deceitful circle falsely claim. But each of those losses is an enormous loss for us’, he said. The President chose not to disclose the number of wounded troops: this, he said, was to prevent Russia from knowing how many people had ‘left the battlefield’.
The news was shocking but not surprising. Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister, recently claimed that the Ukrainian army had suffered over 160,000 casualties during counter-offensive last year. Such Russian updates on the matter are widely dismissed in Ukraine as ludicrous. However, when the Economist, citing US officials, reported last November that a staggering 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had perished, the news appeared horribly plausible.
The thousands of graves across the country felt like a haunting suggestion that the dead may soon outnumber the living
When Russian tanks were rolling on Kyiv, keeping quiet about Ukrainian losses was crucial to prevent despair and uphold morale. Now, clarity has become imperative. Thousands of graves adorned with blue-and-yellow flags across the country felt like a haunting suggestion that the dead may soon outnumber the living. The public demand to disclose the number of fallen soldiers had been fuelled even more by both Russian propaganda and Western analyses. When the consensus estimate was so much higher than the actual figure, Zelensky felt he had to act.
The 31,000 death toll he has provided leaves gaps in understanding the state of the Ukrainian army and how many recruits it needs. Thousands of wounded soldiers won’t return to the frontline, and many are missing, with fragments of bodies often unidentifiable or inaccessible due to ongoing hostilities. Last October, Leonid Tymchenko, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that some 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers have disappeared. How many of them are alive and being held as prisoners of war in occupied territories and Russia is unknown.
Zelensky also claimed that a total of 180,000 Russians have been killed in two years of full-scale war. If so, that suggests a six-to-one ratio. Add 320,000 injured and missing, and total Russian casualties are up to half a million, he said. Last December, the US intelligence report assessed that the war in Ukraine has cost Russia 315,000 casualties. But such losses don’t stop Putin who has an autocrat’s tolerance of high human losses. It suits him to make this a war of attrition.
After capturing Bakhmut and (recently) Avdiivka, Russian forces are now progressing in several areas of the front, pushing back the undermanned and undergunned Ukrainian army. Zelensky said Putin is gathering troops for another counteroffensive in late May or early summer. He has now dropped talk of imminent victory saying only that ‘it’s going to be difficult for us in the coming months’. He insisted, though, that he’s not giving up: ‘We have no choice but to win. Losing means we will cease to exist. If we have the weapons, we will win.’
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