Ukraine repeatedly provides information on the number of fallen Russian soldiers. However, neither the government in Kyiv nor the Ukrainian military talks very often about their own losses. In front of the families of the fallen, the army chief now gives a specific number for the first time.
According to Ukrainian sources, almost 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russian war of aggression that started at the end of February. The head of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valeriy Zalushnyi, gave this number at a conference honoring military veterans and the families of the fallen, without giving any details. According to Zalushnyi, Ukrainian children need special attention because their fathers are at the front and “possibly among the nearly 9,000 heroes killed.”
It is one of the extremely rare statements by the Ukrainian government or army leaders about their own losses in the war. However, Saluschnji did not say whether this includes all military personnel killed in action, such as border guards. He also did not comment on how many civilians were killed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at the conference that around a million people were defending Ukraine as part of the armed forces or other services.
On February 24, the Russian army launched a war of aggression against Ukraine. Since then, the Russian units have mainly occupied parts of southern Ukraine and the east. Thousands of civilians have been killed in daily rocket and artillery attacks, and hundreds of thousands have had to flee. The Ukrainian General Staff tweeted that 45,400 Russian soldiers have died since the war began.
After 100 days of war, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov admitted in June that up to a hundred Ukrainian soldiers were being killed and up to 500 injured every day during the heavy fighting in the east of the country. In early June, President Zelenskyi put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed every day at between 60 and 100. The last overall balance is from mid-April. At that time, Selenskyj had spoken of up to 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed and around 10,000 injured.
