31,000 UKRAINIAN TROOPS KILLED IN WAR WITH RUSSIA, SAYS PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY

Mon 26 February 2024:

In the last two years, 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives fighting Russia, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said on Sunday.

Speaking at a forum in the capital Kyiv, Zelenskyy said, 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers “have died in this war.”

“Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us,” he said at the event, titled Ukraine. Year 2024.

He did not disclose the number of wounded, saying that doing so would aid Russian military planning.

This was the first time that Kyiv has confirmed the number of its losses since Moscow launched its “special military operation” on the country on Feb. 24, 2022.

Zelenskyy also said that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but that exact figures were not currently available.

He claimed that 180,000 Russian troops had died during the war.

It’s the first time that Kyiv has confirmed the number of its losses since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Russia has also provided few official casualty figures. Independent Russian news outlet Mediazona said on Saturday that about 75,000 Russian men died in 2022 and 2023 fighting in the war.

A United States intelligence report declassified in mid-December 2023 estimated that 315,000 Russian troops had been killed or wounded in Ukraine. If accurate, the figure would represent 87 percent of the roughly 360,000 troops Russia had before the war, according to the report.

‘Plan for new offensive against Russia’

Zelenskyy told a news conference on Sunday that Ukraine has a clear plan for a new counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Kyiv’s troops conducted a counteroffensive last year, but were unable to break through prepared defensive lines in the Russian-occupied south and east.

“There is a plan [for a counteroffensive], the plan is clear, I can’t tell you the details,” Zelenskyy said.

He said that a major shake-up that saw the head of Ukraine’s military replaced earlier this month was connected to the new plan of action on the battlefield.

“This plan is related to the change of management; there are corresponding changes. Several plans will be prepared due to a leak of information,” Zelenskyy said, without elaborating.

Delays in arms shipments

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov highlighted that they still needed to deliver on their commitments if Kyiv is to have any chance of holding out against Moscow and stressed that delays in arms shipments will cost lives.

“We look to the enemy: Their economy is almost $2 trillion, they use up to 15 percent official and nonofficial budget [funds] for the war, which constitutes over $100bn annually. So basically whenever a commitment doesn’t come on time, we lose people, we lose territory,” he said, speaking at the Kyiv forum.

Europe has admitted it will fall far short of a plan to deliver more than one million artillery shells to Ukraine by March, instead hoping to complete the shipments by the end of the year.

Kyiv has also been weakened by the blocking of a vital $60bn US aid package amid political wrangling in the US Congress.

US President Joe Biden said the hold-ups directly contributed to Ukraine being forced to withdraw from Avdiivka.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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