Zelenskyy says Ukraine war deaths are a small fraction of Trump claim
KYIV – Around 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday, in apparent response to President-elect Donald Trump’s claim hours earlier that Kyiv had “lost” some 400,000 soldiers in battle “and many more civilians.”
In a post on Telegram, Zelenskyy wrote that Ukraine had about 370,000 “cases of providing assistance to the wounded.” “Approximately 50% of the wounded return to the ranks, and all wounds, including minor and repeated ones, are recorded.”
Zelenskyy’s count Sunday was greater than the 31,000 he reported in February but remained far below estimates by Western intelligence agencies. He did not say how many troops were missing, a number believed to be significant.
Russia, Zelenskyy said, had suffered 198,000 killed and more than 550,000 wounded.
Last week, Zelenskyy disputed a report of around 80,000 deaths published by the Wall Street Journal. The true count, he told the Japanese agency Kyodo News, was “less, much less,” but he did not give details.
Trump, posting on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, called Ukrainian losses ridiculous. He did not clarify whether his 400,000 included both dead and wounded.
He wrote that “close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever.”
The exchange came a day after Zelenskyy and Trump met in Paris, their first face-to-face encounter since Trump’s election in November. French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the pair Saturday at the Élysée Palace before all attended a ceremony to reopen the Notre Dame cathedral.
Trump, in his post Sunday, wrote that Zelenskyy and Ukraine “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”
“There should be an immediate ceasefire, and negotiations should begin,” Trump wrote. “If (the war) keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir (Putin) well. This is his time to act.”
Zelenskyy described their meeting Saturday as “good.”
“We discussed important things on the battlefield in Ukraine and in the global situation – from our front to North Korea,” he wrote on Telegram. He wrote that Ukraine required “a just and strong peace that the Russians will not destroy in a few years, as they have already done.”
He reiterated Kyiv’s need for security guarantees from its Western allies. He also wrote of “thousands” of Ukrainian military personnel and civilians in Russian captivity, as well as Ukrainian children deported to Russia.
“This is what this war is all about,” Zelenskyy wrote. “It cannot be finished with just a piece of paper and a few signatures.”
“War should not be endless,” he wrote, but “peace should be permanent and reliable.”