Ukraine Hails ‘Truly Colossal Achievement’ of Inflicting Half-Million Russian Casualties

Russian deaths and wounded crossed the half-million mark in the past week, per Ukraine’s publicly stated estimate, prompting celebration from Kyiv state media.

Ukraine’s government-controlled information service Ukrinform reports the war has now “reached a psychologically important milestone” of — by their own reckoning — over 500,000 Russian “killed or seriously injured”.

Inflicting this many dead and wounded on Russia is the equivalent of the population of some small countries and several Russian cities, the state news report trumpeted. They stated: “So if you imagine that these half a million fallen Russian soldiers were residing in one of such cities, then it can be said that it no longer exists; just imagine that all of the city has disappeared.”

In all, Ukraine said, killing or maiming half a million of the invaders is “truly a colossal achievement by the Ukrainian military”.

Secrecy in wartime is normal and the invasion of Ukraine is no exception, so getting a realistic appraisal for losses for either side is difficult. As previously reported, Ukraine’s claimed Russian body count is considerably higher than that occasionally published by Britain’s Ministry of Defence, for instance. In March of this year, while Ukraine was claiming 416,000 Russian dead and wounded, the United Kingdom publicly put it at 315,000.

Estimates for Ukrainian casualties are harder to come by. Kyiv doesn’t generally publish figures for its own war dead and injured, but President Zelensky did speak out on the subject on the second anniversary of the conflict starting. The 300,000 figure alleged by the Kremlin was a “deceitful” lie, he said, while asserting in February the true number was 31,000 killed.

In April, a journalistic project collating data of Russian graveyard burials, social media commemorations, and newspaper obituaries reported it had managed to “confirm” 50,000 Russian dead.