Ukrainian ambassador: Ukraine will eventually reveal 'horrible' losses

RT
Sun, 09 Apr 2023 18:23 UTC

© MFA of Ukraine

Vadim Pristaiko, Ukraine Ambassador to the UK, 2019

The true number of casualties will be acknowledged only once the conflict is over, Vadim Pristaiko has said

Ukraine will reveal the extent of its "horrible" losses once its conflict with Russia is over, Vadim Pristaiko, Kiev's ambassador to the UK, said in an interview released on Friday.

Asked by British tabloid the Daily Express to comment on casualties among Ukrainian military personnel and civilians, Pristaiko said "it has been our policy from the start not to discuss our losses."

"When the war is over, we will acknowledge this. I think it will be a horrible number," he added.

Pristaiko dismissed any possibility of talks between Moscow and Kiev - at least until Russia withdraws its troops from the territories Ukraine claims as its own. "So, we have to fight to the very last of them or, very unfortunately, the last of us as well," the envoy said.

The ambassador also commented on the assault brigades that Ukraine says it has assembled for a much-anticipated spring offensive against Russia. "Whoever says there are 40,000 men in these brigades, I would like to point out that we have mobilized a million men," Pristaiko stated.

Both sides of the Ukraine conflict rarely provide data on their losses. However, last autumn, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put Kiev's fatalities at 100,000, a claim that was disputed by Ukraine and later removed from the official's website. In December, Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, put the death toll among Kiev's military at between 12,000 and 13,000 people.

Russia has not officially updated its losses since last September, when Moscow's Ministry of Defense estimated that 5,937 service members had died.

Pristaiko's comments come as Ukrainian and Western officials claim that Ukraine will launch a counteroffensive in the coming weeks. Commenting on statements about a potential Ukrainian push, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov noted that the Russian military "thoroughly tracks all the relevant information" on the matter.

Comment: Pristaiko is putting on a brave front, but he has to know that even if Ukraine still has the wherewithal to launch a counteroffensive, the chances of its success are almost nil. A sane government would have already sued for peace, but Ukraine's masters don't care what happens to it, only about damaging Russia. That the country has lost, and continues to lose its best and brightest are of no moment at all.

The Grayzone analyzed the leaked Pentagon documents for potential information on losses in the Ukraine-Russian war:

The leaked documents claim that Russia has sustained troop losses ranging from 16,000 to 17,500 while Ukrainian losses amount to as many as 71,500 - a staggering differential that stands at odds with the triumphalist narrative projected by Kiev. They are dated March 1 2023 and appear to be part of an ongoing briefing effort to analyze the war's progress and plan a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

[...]
Ukrainian killed in action outnumber Russians 4:1

Perhaps the most notable piece of information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio. According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in action.

That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA's cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky's top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia's military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.)

Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA's over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway's defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia's 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are "significantly well over 100,000."