An aide of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed that about 13,000 soldiers have died since Russia began its military offensive in Ukraine in February.
In his interview with Ukrainian TV station Channel 24, Mykhailo Podolyak said they received official evaluations from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Zelensky regarding the death toll of soldiers.
“We have official evaluations by the General Staff, official evaluations by the commander-in-chief [Mr Zelensky], and they range from 10,000 to 12,500-13,000 killed,” Podolyak was quoted as saying by BBC.
But the number of soldiers killed in action provided by Podolyak has not been confirmed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Podolyak said Kyiv was “openly talking about the number of the killed” despite reports that Ukraine rarely provides numbers for casualties. He added that the Ukrainian president would provide an official tally “when the right moment comes,” Al Jazeera reported.
If the tally is confirmed, the number of Ukrainian soldiers who died in combat has increased since Armed Forces chief Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi announced in August that 9,000 soldiers were killed by Russian forces.
Podolyak’s estimates came after European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a now-deleted video that over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have already died in the war.
Bohdan Senyk, the press service chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said they could not confirm the figure provided by the top E.U. official and emphasized that reports about the casualties were subject to broadcast restrictions, Turkish media Anadolu Agency reported.
The number of military casualties remains fluid as Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its tenth month.
Last month, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley estimated that 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed or injured in the war.
In its last update in September, the Russian government said that more than 61,000 Ukrainian personnel and 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war.
However, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military, in its latest tally, put the death toll of Russian soldiers at 89,440.
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