Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has revealed the data on the combatant casualties on the Ukrainian side, for the first time since the beginning of the russian larger invasion launched in February 2022: "thirty-one thousand of Ukrainian military [servicemen] have died in this war," the Head of State said during a press conference on February 24th, on the second anniversary since the beginning of the russian war campaign.
The statistics regarding the wounded soldiers and officers cannot be disclosed, so that "russia doesn't know how many people have left the battlefield," Zelenskyi added. He did not tell the journalists the number of those gone missing because of inaccuracies in the calculations.
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On a note from Defense Express, traditionally, the data on casualties also includes prisoners of war. Yurii Taraniuk, head of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, earlier said some 8,000 Ukrainians remained in russian captivity as of January 24th, 2024, including 1,600 civilians.
President Zelenskyi also stated the number of russian military personnel killed in action: 180,000 people, and the total war losses are 500,000 people with the wounded counted in.
Note, the current estimate on russian casualties, issued daily by the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, is 410,700 personnel. The discrepancy could possibly be due to POWs in Ukrainian captivity included in the calculations, or because Ukraine's General Staff doesn't count in those with minor injuries or sanitary losses unrelated to combat directly.
Apart from that, worth noting that while the Ukrainian military staff is counting enemy casualties from one side, the information disclosed by the President might be obtained from the russian side through intelligence.
Read more: 733 Days of russia-Ukraine War – russian Casualties In Ukraine
