Artillerymen of the Ukrainian 80th separate airborne assault brigade fire from a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher towards Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast on April 18, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)
Russia has lost 498,940 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported on May 24.
This number includes 1,240 casualties Russian forces suffered just over the past day.
According to the report, Russia has also lost 7,635 tanks, 14,775 armored fighting vehicles, 17,569 vehicles and fuel tanks, 12,902 artillery systems, 1,080 multiple launch rocket systems, 813 air defense systems, 356 airplanes, 326 helicopters, 10,401 drones, 27 ships and boats, and one submarine.
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The bodies of a 3-year-old boy and a woman, likely his mother, were found in the rubble of an apartment building following Russian strikes. Search and rescue operations are still active at 3 a.m. local time, according to governor Syniehubov.
The news comes a few hours after Zelensky announced he would appoint Kyrylo Budanov, head of the military intelligence, to take charge of the President’s Office.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko will soon give the president a list of possible candidates to replace Serhii Deineko as head of Ukraine's State Border Guard Service.
HUR has published video footage of Kapustin's staged "death," which the agency used to collect a $500,000 bounty. The video shows a drone strike on a minibus shortly after Kapustin is seen entering the vehicle.
Along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine, the front line has remained largely static, but fighting continues every day. The Kyiv Independent’s Francis Farrell and Olena Zashko embedded with Ukraine’s forces in Kherson Oblast, following FPV drone and night bomber teams tasked with defending river islands.
The poll also revealed that 69% of Ukrainians support a peace plan that would freeze the war with security guarantees, as long as Ukraine is not forced to officially recognize Russian-occupied territories as part of Russia, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said.
Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service warned on Jan. 2 that Russia may be preparing a provocation as part of its efforts to disrupt the U.S.-mediated peace talks.
Earlier on Jan. 1, Volodymyr Saldo, a Ukrainian politician turned top Russian proxy head of Russian-occupied parts of Kherson Oblast, accused Kyiv of launching three drones at a hotel and a cafe on the Black Sea coast. Saldo claimed that the alleged New Year drone strike on the village of Khorly killed 24 people, including a child, and wounded more than 50.
Russian forces occupied 4,336 square kilometers (1,674 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in 2025, accounting for less than 1% of the country, the Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState reported in an year-end assessment published on Jan. 1.
