MONITORING (SW) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Speaking at the “Ukraine. Year 2024” forum in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said that “each of these losses is a great sacrifice” for Ukraine.
He added that “tens of thousands of civilians” had been killed in occupied areas of Ukraine, but said that no exact figures would be available until the war was over.
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, according to Al Jazeera.
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.
It has been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine and commemorations to mark the second anniversary brought expressions of continued support, new bilateral security agreements and new aid commitments from Ukraine’s Western allies.
But 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.
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, Al Jazeera reported.
Umerov highlighted that such delays put Ukraine at a further disadvantage “in the mathematics of war” against Russia, which the West has said is increasingly building a war economy.
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.
On Sunday, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he was “deeply convinced that the US will not abandon Ukraine in terms of financial, military and armed support”.
