Volodymyr Zelensky has been talking up Russia’s battlefield fatalities and has asked his new defense minister to make it a priority.
In December alone, more than 35,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded, Ukraine’s leader says, and the aim should be to raise the number even higher – to 50,000 per month.
“Make the cost of war for Russia one it cannot sustain, thereby forcing peace through strength” – this was the task set him by the president, Mykhailo Fedorov told reporters in his first briefing as Defense Minister.
The suggestion that Russia is suffering heavy losses is not new. A new report last week estimated that 1.2 million Russians have either been killed, wounded or are missing since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago – the highest casualty figure suffered by a major military power since World War II. The report put the number of Ukrainian casualties between 500,000 and 600,000.
“The data suggests Russia is hardly winning,” the report’s authors wrote.
Maybe not, but as senior officials from Ukraine, Russia and the United States prepare for the next round of di
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