ZELENSKYY SAYS 55,000 UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS KILLED DURING WAR

Thu 05 February 2026:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has provided a rare assessment of battlefield losses during an interview with a French television network.

Zelenskyy said an estimated 55,000 of his country’s soldiers have been killed since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“And there are a great number Ukraine lists as missing,” he told France 2, which translated his comments.

Both Kiev and Moscow rarely disclose their own casualty figures while reporting enemy losses and analysts say both sides are likely under-reporting their own deaths while inflating those of the other.

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A year ago, Zelensky had estimated more than 45,000 dead and 390,000 wounded since the start of the war in an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan. By his latest figures, roughly 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed over the past year.

Since 2025, Ukraine has received the bodies of more than 16,500 soldiers from Russia through formal exchanges.

Independent estimates paint a far higher toll. A January report by Washington-based think tank CSIS estimated Ukrainian casualties at 500,000 to 600,000 troops, including 100,000 to 140,000 dead and Russian casualties at 1.2 million troops, including 325,000 dead.

CSIS says its figures are based on information from the military, intelligence agencies and governments of various countries.

There are also efforts to count confirmed deaths using funeral records, obituaries and social media posts. The Russian news site Mediazona reported at least 168,000 verified Russian deaths by the end of January, while the Ukrainian site ualosses.org recorded 87,000 dead, 86,000 missing and 4,400 prisoners of war in Russia.

Both sites note their counts are likely incomplete.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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