Ukrainian presidential adviser Volodymyr Zelensky said up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia invaded their country in February.
“We have official estimates of the General Staff, from 10 to 13 thousand dead,” Mikhail Podolyak, one of Zelensky’s advisers, told Channel 24 of Ukraine. He added that the country’s president will release official data “when the time is right.”
“We are frank about the number of dead,” he added, noting that the number of wounded soldiers is greater than the number of dead.
When Russian forces attempted to take full control of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine in June, Zelenskiy said his country was losing “60 to 100 soldiers a day.”
In the opposite camp, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in September that 5,937 Russian troops had been killed since the conflict began on February 24.
In November, U.S. Chief of Staff General Mark Milley said more than 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded since the invasion of Ukraine began, indicating that losses among Ukrainian forces could be similar.
