According to a top officer, up to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since Russia’s incursion began.
An advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky named Mykhailo Podolyak estimated that between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers had died.
The Ukrainian military has not backed up Mr. Podolyak’s claims, and neither Russia nor Ukraine frequently disclose casualty totals.
He said in June that every day, 100 to 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed.
The most senior US general, Mark Milley, stated last month that since the start of the war, roughly 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded.
Ursula Von der Leyen, the leader of the EU Commission, said that 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in a video message on Wednesday. A representative for the EU Commission later stated that this was an error and that the number really included both the dead and the injured.
Mr. Podolyak claimed that Kyiv was “openly discussing about the number of the killed” in an interview with Ukrainian television station Channel 24.
He added: “We have official assessments by the General Staff and the commander-in-chief [Mr. Zelensky], and they range from 10,000 to 12,500-13,000 killed.
He continued by saying that “substantial” numbers of civilians may have been killed. By the middle of June, 3,600 civilian fatalities had been reported by BBC News. The number is probably considerably higher now.
According to Ms. von der Leyen, 20,000 civilians in Ukraine were slain. Although the EU Commission did not retract that figure, it was eliminated from later iterations of the movie along with the claim that 100,000 troops had been slain.
Mr Podolyak also suggested that up to 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed since the invasion began on 24 February, and that a further 100,000 to 150,000 had been wounded, or were missing or unable to return to combat.
The BBC’s Russian Service has established that at least 9,311 Russian soldiers of all ranks have been killed since the invasion on 24 February while the true death toll could be more than 18,600.
In other developments:
- The Ukrainian military said Russia was using dummy nuclear-capable missiles to exhaust Ukraine’s air defences. Russia was using rockets designed for nuclear use without explosive warheads, Ukrainian military experts said, suggesting this might be because the country has used so many of its other missiles in massive strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure
- Another senior adviser to President Zelensky, Oleg Ustenko, accused BP of being entitled to hundreds of millions of pounds in “blood money” from investments in Russia. BP said it was no longer receiving any profits from Russian energy giant Rosneft
- The US and French presidents have said they will keep working together to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its actions. At a press conference during a visit by President Emmanuel Macron to the White House, President Biden also said that he was “prepared to speak to Mr Putin” in order to broker an end to the war
- TikTok is hosting dozens of videos glorifying violence by Russia’s Wagner group of mercenaries, according to a new report. The videos have been viewed more than a billion times, found US-based organisation NewsGuard. Tiktok said it will act against any content violating its policies.