KIEV: Around 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion began two years ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
The Ukrainian President said at a news conference on Sunday that he is providing the updated death toll in response to the inflated figures that Russia has quoted.
"31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever (Vladimir) Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us," Zelensky was quoted as saying by the BBC.
The Ukrainian President said he would not give the number of wounded as that would help Russian military planning.
Speaking about the wider losses in the war, the Ukrainian President said that tens of thousands of civilians had died in the areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia but the true number was unknown. "I don't know how many of them died, how many were killed, how many were murdered, tortured, how many were deported," he was quoted as saying by the British news broadcaster.
Zelensky’s tally differs sharply from estimates by US officials, who, in August last year, put the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed at 70,000.
In terms of Russian losses, he said that around 180,000 Russian soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more injured.