Zelensky puts the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the front at 55,000.
The Ukrainian president admits to losses among his ranks and estimates that conquering eastern Ukraine would cost Russia the lives of 800,000 soldiers.
BarcelonaThe war in Ukraine is the deadliest in Europe since World War II. But determining the extent of the losses on both sides is a difficult task. As in all conflicts, the government and high command prefer to hide or downplay the figures to maintain morale among their troops, so most analysts and media outlets rely on estimates.
But in a move that contradicts this logic, President Volodymyr Zelensky has put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the front lines since the start of the war at 55,000. In an interview with French television channel France 2 –amid negotiations in Abu Dhabi with Washington and Moscow—, he explained that the tally corresponds to "soldiers killed on the battlefield, whether professional or conscripted." In addition to these official figures, the leader admitted that there is a "large number of people" officially considered missing, without specifying how many.
It had been almost a year since the Kyiv government had released an official tally. The last one, made public during an appearance by Zelensky on the American network NBC in February 2025, put the number of deaths on the front lines at 46,000. If both tallies were accurate, this would mean that Ukrainian troops have suffered fewer than 10,000 losses in the past year.
Moscow's data is even more secretive. The Kremlin stopped publishing casualty figures on the front lines in September 2022, when the conflict had only been going on for a few months, and has considered them a state secret ever since. At that time, it had fewer than 6,000 deaths among its ranks.
The truth is that the figures could be much higher on both sides. A study published in late January by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in WashingtonIt estimated that the human cost of the Russian aggression against Ukraine was approximately 1.2 million Russian casualties and nearly 600,000 Ukrainian casualties. It thus placed the overall death toll at 1.8 million. To these, throughout 2025, Russia would have added 415,000 casualties (dead and wounded), averaging 35,000 per month; while Ukraine would have registered between 100,000 and 140,000 soldiers killed during the same period.
800,000 lives to conquer eastern Ukraine
"We Ukrainians are aware of the price that every meter and every kilometer of this land costs our army," Zelensky admitted in the interview conducted by French journalist Léa Salamé. He went on to explain that, according to estimates from his military circle, "conquering eastern Ukraine would cost [the Russian army] 800,000 more lives [of soldiers]" and They would need a minimum of two years, with very slow progress."In my opinion, they won't last that long," he concluded.
It is precisely the territory of eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainian president wants to avoid giving away to Moscow to the negotiations brokered by Washington. Putin has said he would halt the aggression if Ukrainian troops withdraw from Donbas. But Kyiv believes that the military conquest of the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia would be too difficult for his adversaries to achieve. Therefore, Zelensky's strategy involves freezing the current front line and creating a special economic zone with international oversight. "We have to control our part. They have to control theirs. But in the middle, we need an international intervention force, an international presence," Zelensky added, reiterating his latest demand: the presence of peacekeeping troops.