The MP from the "Voice" party, the secretary of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence Roman Kostenko believes that the Wall Street Journalʼs (WSJ) data about 80 000 Ukrainian soldiers who died in the war with Russia are exaggerated.
He informed Radio Svoboda about this.
"I think these are exaggerated data. Definitely. Precisely, if we are talking about the dead — those who are recognized in our country," he said.
Kostenko believes that the number of 50 000 dead may be exaggerated or approximate, although he notes that he does not have accurate information about Ukrainian losses.
According to Kostenko, there is no accurate information about Ukrainian losses. He says that in 2022 and 2023 there were 19 000 dead military personnel in Ukraine each — we are talking about official death certificates. However, there are those who have gone missing. Kostenko called the information about 50 000 dead Ukrainian soldiers approximate.
What preceded?
The Wall Street Journal wrote that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Russia have lost a total of about a million servicemen killed and wounded. WSJ, citing a confidential Ukrainian estimate made earlier this year, put the number of dead Ukrainian servicemen at 80 000 and wounded at 400 000.
WSJ estimated the number of killed Russian servicemen at approximately 200 000. The article also talked about 400 000 wounded soldiers of the Russian Federation.
- Ukraine and Russia give almost no information about their losses in the war. Moscow officially last named the number of people killed in September 2022 — then they claimed 5 937 dead. Kyiv did not do this for a long time, saying that the data would be disclosed after the war.
- On February 25, 2024, for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky declared the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers — 31 000. He did not name the number of wounded and missing.