What Zelenskyy said about war losses in December 2024

What did Ukraine's president say about the human cost of the war as of 9 December 2024? The figures had been given a day earlier, on 8 December 2024, when Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, spoke about losses on both sides since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

According to Zelenskyy, 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in action, and 370,000 had been injured. He also gave an estimate for Russian losses: 198,000 soldiers killed and more than 550,000 injured.

The numbers were his own assessment, and they were presented as estimates where Russian casualties were concerned.

The wider toll, as later tallied

Later estimates covering a longer period were considerably broader. A later account put total casualties in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from 24 February 2022 to June 2026, at between 1,274,000 and 2 million. That range was not available on 9 December 2024, and it covers a far longer span than the figures Zelenskyy gave.