Ukraine's Military Losses May Be Greatly Undervalued

(MENAFN) According to a recent analysis by a newspaper from France, the actual number of Ukrainian military fatalities in the ongoing war with Russia could be significantly higher than official reports suggest.

Both Kyiv and Moscow refrain from releasing frequent updates regarding military casualties, often blaming each other for exaggerating enemy losses.

Back in February, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky informed a news agency that 46,000 Ukrainian troops had perished and around 380,000 were injured since the war’s intensification in 2022.

Despite these figures, the newspaper indicated that Ukraine is likely downplaying the extent of its battlefield deaths.

“The real death toll is likely much higher,” wrote the French outlet in a detailed report focusing on Ukraine’s rising investment in military burial grounds.

The feature described a national memorial initiative near Kyiv, as well as a nearly full soldiers' cemetery in Lviv.

“Construction projects rising across Ukraine say more about the scale of the slaughter than statistics ever could,” the report noted, pointing to how new cemeteries reflect the conflict’s toll more vividly than official numbers.

In another February 2024 address, Zelensky revised the death toll to 31,000.

Around the same time, a news outlet referenced an anonymous source who claimed the Ukrainian leadership might be deliberately reducing the figures to avoid endangering ongoing military backing from Western allies.

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