Volodymyr Zelensky says 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed during Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian president said he would not give the number of wounded as that would help Russian military planning.
Typically, Ukrainian officials do not make casualty figures public, and other estimates are much higher.
It comes after the defence minister said half of all Western aid for Ukraine has been delayed, costing lives and territory.
Mr Zelensky said on Sunday that he was providing an updated death toll in response to the inflated figures that Russia has quoted.
“31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us.”
How trustworthy are these numbers?
Well, he is communicating the numbers to emphasise how dire the situation is. So:
- Making the numbers too high would signal to Putin that the war is going “well” for Russia. Russia still has about 10x the casualties most likely.
- Making the numbers too low and the situation might not look dire enough to serve as a pressure mechanism on US congress and EU lawmakers.
There is a whole wiki article that is about the casualty estimates with their various sources and methods of estimations. Wiki page: Casualties of the Russo Ukranians war.
So you will have to make up your own mind. I personally think the number is on the low side and will probably at least serve as the lower bound of the casualties.
Probably not very. It would be best to use a third party intelligence to estimate.
That being said, everyone has their own spin to put on it, so you’ll never get a true count.
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