Zelensky Reveals Ukrainian Army Losses Throughout the Conflict

Ukraine has lost 31,000 servicemen during the two-year military conflict with Russia. This information was announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during the "Ukraine 2024" conference. Reported by Страна.ua, the Ukrainian leader also declined to mention the number of injured and missing soldiers.

“Every person is a very significant loss for us. < ... > I won’t say how many injured we have because Russia will know how many have left the battlefield. I simply won’t comment on that,” clarified the head of state. Zelensky linked the non-disclosure of the number of missing soldiers to the idea that such estimates could be biased. According to him, the prisoner exchanges with Russia “showed that several missing guys have returned alive.”

Ukrainian authorities have voiced the losses of the armed forces during the early months of the military operation several times. Specifically, in April 2022, Zelensky estimated the number of Ukrainian military casualties in an interview with CNN at 2,500-3,000 people. In August 2022, the then Chief Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, stated that Ukraine had lost 9,000 servicemen during the first six months of the conflict. Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to the head of the Ukrainian president's office, mentioned in December 2022 that up to 13,000 Ukrainian servicemen had died since the onset of military operations. In the subsequent months, Kyiv refrained from public assessments of losses.

The Russian Ministry of Defense provides much larger estimates regarding the losses of the Ukrainian armed forces. In January, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Ukrainian army had lost 215,000 men alone in 2023. The last evaluation of the losses of the Russian army during military operations was delivered by the minister in September 2022, stating that 5,937 Russian servicemen had died since the beginning of the conflict.