At least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in Russia's war, with many more missing, Zelensky tells French media
At least 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale war, President Volodymyr Zelensky told France TV in an interview on Feb. 4.
"Officially on the battlefield, the number of military personnel killed, whether career soldiers or people who were mobilized, is 55,000," Zelensky said.
"And there are a large number of people that Ukraine considers missing."
Zelensky's statement marks a rare public comment on Ukraine's battlefield losses. Kyiv largely avoided commenting on its losses for the first two years of the full-scale invasion, until Zelensky announced in February 2024 that 31,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.
Zelensky's figures do not include the Ukrainian soldiers killed between 2014 and 2022, when Russia's war was largely contained to eastern Ukraine. According to a United Nations estimate, 4,400 Ukrainian soldiers were killed during this period.
Moscow does not disclose its casualty figures at all. The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reports that as of Feb. 4, Russia has lost around 1,243,070 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 22, 2022. The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured.
The Russian independent media outlet Mediazona, in collaboration with the BBC Russian service, has confirmed the identities of 168,142 Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine as of Feb. 1.
Russia has suffered "more losses than any major power in any war since World War II" in its all-out war in Ukraine, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies released January 2026.
Zelensky also told France TV that Russia would continue to incur staggering losses if it attempted to conquer all of eastern Ukraine by force of arms. His comments come amid the latest round of trilateral peace talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S., where the status of Ukraine's eastern Donbas territory remains a major point of contention in negotiations.
"We, the Ukrainians, are perfectly aware of the price that every meter and every kilometer of this land costs the Russian army," Zelensky said in the interview.
"They don't count the people who die. We are forced to. To conquer eastern Ukraine, it would cost them 800,000 more corpses, the corpses of their soldiers. It will take them at least two years, with very slow progress. In my opinion, they won't last that long."
The Kremlin continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from its eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts completely — including parts of the region that Russia has failed to seize militarily despite nearly four years of war.
Kyiv has rejected this condition.
"(T)here can be no compromise on the issue of our own sovereignty. This is our land," Zelensky told France TV.
