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The number of Russian victims in the war in Ukraine, which has been going on for 801 days, already reaches half a million in the sum of the dead and wounded. This was stated by French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné in an interview with the Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe.
“Europe and its partners will remain united and determined as long as necessary. Russia’s military failure is already obvious. We estimate Russian military losses at 500,000, including 150,000 dead,” he said. “All this for what?” he asked rhetorically. “It can be summed up in two words: for nothing,” he added.
As the France 24 website points out, the French estimate differs slightly from the numbers reported by the Ukrainian side. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in February that 180,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war.
Russia does not consistently publish information about its losses.
These are only estimates and the exact number cannot be ascertained. However, both figures are orders of magnitude different from the British BBC’s April report. The station uses its own reporters, volunteers and the independent media group Mediazona to create a unique database of Russian losses. So far, they have managed to verify 50,000 specific names of Russians who have died in the war since the beginning of the invasion (we wrote here).
“The average age of those who initially fought in Ukraine was 21, but then Russia started recruiting volunteers and prisoners, and the average age increased to 40 to 45. It has changed what an ordinary soldier looks like,” said journalist Olga Ivshina, who is compiling a database of Russian losses with her team, in an interview for Seznam Zprávy.
Conversation
“Strangely, it often happens that people only find out that their loved ones have died thanks to our database,” says journalist Olga Ivshina, who monitors Russian losses in Ukraine. In an interview for Seznam Zprávy, she revealed what the families of the fallen confided in her.
Britain estimates the total Russian losses, i.e. the sum of killed and wounded, at approximately 450,000.
Even Kiev kept silent about its losses on the battlefields for a long time. Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself broke the rule that the world learns the real numbers of victims only after the end of the war, a day after the world commemorated the second anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. During a press conference on February 25, 2024, he announced that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died since the first day of the war “until today”.
“… recently there have been voices in the radical part of the American public that are not on our side. And those voices asked: ‘How many more victims do you need? Ukraine has already lost 300,000 people.’ And then information came from the Russians, who said that around 100,000 soldiers had already fallen. And that the Russians themselves lost about 60 thousand… This is all a lie. Deception. Every person is a great loss to us. 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in this war,” Zelensky said.
Some military analysts believe that Russia could be on the verge of launching a new major offensive in Ukraine.
News from the battlefield
The Russians continue to develop an attack near the village of Ocheretyne, where they unexpectedly broke through Ukrainian defenses in the Donetsk region. They now pay more attention to this place than to the city of Časiv Jar. So far, the Ukrainian command has not been able to close the gap in the defense.
In the interview, Séjourné therefore also talked about financing the defense against the aggressor state. He confirmed that frozen Russian assets in the European Union could also be used for these purposes. However, he did not say anything concrete about this topic.
“With the increase in rates, these assets generated almost four billion euros in 2023. We want them to be used to finance the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine,” he only stated.
Tags: France published estimate Russians killed Ukrainian battlefield
