According to Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Defense, Ukrainians should avoid wishful thinking and premature celebrations of victories by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He also urged the media and bloggers to share official information only from Ukraine’s law enforcement, warning that Russia could weaponize data against Kyiv.
“People constantly celebrate victory on social networks, declare that everyone has essentially won, and then expectations go unmet. That should not happen,” he stated.
In addition, he appealed to media and bloggers not to publish information about the course of hostilities beyond what is released by the Ministry of Defense and other law enforcement agencies. He argued that only the military department holds the complete, official, and accurate information that might be used by the enemy when it comes from other sources.
On his Telegram channel, he also cautioned against believing reports of massive losses by the Ukrainian forces. Referring to a speech by the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, at a Veterans Forum, he said that the death toll was under nine thousand.
It should be noted that calculating casualties is complicated because some missing persons are classified as missing or not accounted for. The authorized Ukrainian representative, Oleg Kotenko, said that as of mid-July the list of missing persons in special circumstances included about 7.2 thousand military personnel from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This figure does not include the National Guard or the Security Service of Ukraine, and he noted that many of the missing were prisoners of war.
In early June, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that 6489 soldiers were in captivity in the Russian armed forces. As of May 26, the number of Ukrainian soldiers held in captures in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics stood at about 8,000.
“What did they die for?”
Serhiy Krivonos, a former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and a former deputy commander of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, warned about the potential collapse of morale if hundreds of thousands of deaths are forgotten or misrepresented.
He argued that people have the right to demand accountability from authorities for such sacrifices and questioned why nothing was done to save lives. He cautioned that efforts to blur memory or erase history would worsen the pain and asked who would bear responsibility for these losses.
Krivonos spoke on the Ukrainian Media Network YouTube channel, stressing that Ukrainians will soon confront leaders with questions about the extensive sacrifices made for the country.
At the end of August, a document attributed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Zaluzhny, circulated online and purportedly contained data on Ukrainian losses. The document claimed about 130,000 casualties, with figures to July 1, 2022 indicating 76,640 killed, 42,704 wounded, 7,244 captured, and 2,816 missing. It was stated that the document covered only the Ukrainian Armed Forces and did not include other units.
On August 4, a leaked Zaluzhny report circulated on a Ukrainian Telegram channel, though its authenticity was not verified. The material suggested that staffing remained at 43-48 percent despite mobilization, with over 191,000 dead and wounded, and that most of the reserve forces from the fifth mobilization wave had already suffered casualties. It claimed there were no statistics on missing persons.
In early August, Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine’s presidential administration, said that Ukraine was losing 30 to 50 soldiers per day, which he framed as substantially lower than earlier estimates of 100 to 200 daily losses. He had previously indicated higher losses. David Arakhamia, a leader of the governing party, also referenced daily casualties ranging from 200 to 500.
On July 15, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov noted that the peak of losses occurred in May, when as many as 100 soldiers were killed and 300 to 400 wounded per day. The Defense Ministry also stated that the military death toll remained a state secret under martial law.