City workers clean debris outside a multistorey residential building damaged during a Russian drones strike overnight in Kharkiv on Thursday.SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/Getty Images
The number of Russian troops killed or wounded in Ukraine has topped one million, military officials in Kyiv said Thursday, describing the huge price that Moscow has paid for its three-year-old invasion.
The claim by the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces is in line with Western intelligence estimates.
The U.K. Defence Ministry also said in a statement posted Thursday on X that Russia has suffered over one million casualties, including roughly 250,000 killed since it launched the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
On June 3, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said Russia likely would hit the mark of one million casualties this summer in what it called “a stunning and grisly milestone.”
Russia last reported its military casualties early in the war when it acknowledged that about 6,000 soldiers had been killed. Earlier this year, the General Staff of the Russian armed forces claimed that Ukrainian military losses had topped 1 million.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last spoke of Ukrainian military losses in February, when he said in an interview that 45,100 troops had been killed and about 390,000 injured.
The mutual claims of the other side’s losses couldn’t be independently verified.
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The casualty estimates came as Russian forces pummelled Ukraine with drones and other weapons, killing three people and injuring scores of others despite international pressure to accept a ceasefire.
According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 63 drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight. It said that air defences destroyed 28 drones while another 21 were jammed.
Ukrainian police said two people were killed and six were injured in the past 24 hours in the eastern Donetsk region, the focus of the Russian offensive. One person was killed and 14 others were also injured in the southern Kherson region, which is partly occupied by Russian forces, police said.
The authorities in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said 18 people, including four children, were injured by Russian drone attacks overnight.
Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said Russian drones targeted residential districts, educational facilities, kindergartens and other civilian infrastructure.
“Kharkiv is holding on. People are alive. And that is the most important thing,” Terekhov said.
Russia has launched waves of drones and missiles in recent days, with a record bombardment of almost 500 drones on Monday and a wave of 315 drones and seven missiles overnight on Tuesday.
The attack struck Kyiv and the southern port city of Odesa. In an online statement, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow's forces fired more than 315 drones – most of them Shaheds – and seven missiles overnight.
The Associated Press
Ukraine responded to the Russian attacks with drone raids. Russia’s Defence Ministry said that air defences downed 52 Ukrainian drones early Thursday, including 41 over the Belgorod region that borders Ukraine. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said three people were injured by Ukrainian attacks.
The recent escalation in aerial attacks has come alongside a renewed Russian battlefield push along eastern and northeastern parts of the more than 1,000-kilometer front line.
While Russian missile and drone barrage have struck regions all across Ukraine, regions along the front line have faced daily Russian attacks with short-range exploding drones and glide bombs.
On Thursday, the Russian Defence Ministry claimed its troops captured two more villages in the Donetsk region, Oleksiivka and Petrivske. The Ukrainian military had no immediate comment on the Russian claim.
The attacks have continued despite discussions of a potential ceasefire in the war. During their June 2 talks in Istanbul, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators traded memorandums containing sharply divergent conditions that both sides see as non-starters, making a quick deal unlikely.
The only tangible outcome of the talks was an agreement to exchange prisoners of war and the bodies of fallen soldiers.
Russia and Ukraine conducted another POW swap on Thursday that included severely wounded and gravely ill captives, although the sides did not report the numbers.
“Our people are coming home,” Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram. “All of them require medical treatment, and they will receive the necessary help. This is already the second stage of returning those who are severely wounded and seriously ill.”
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According to Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, some of the repatriated soldiers had been listed as missing in action. The oldest among them is 59, the youngest is 22, he said.
In Rome, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte commended U.S. President Donald Trump for his “crucial” move to start direct peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At the same time, Rutte criticized Putin for appointing his aide Vladimir Medinsky as the top negotiator for the talks in Istanbul. Medinsky ascended through the Kremlin ranks after writing a series of books exposing purported Western plots against Russia and denigrating Ukraine.
“I think that the Russians sending this historian now twice to these talks in Istanbul, trying to start with the history of 1,000 years ago and then explaining more or less that Ukraine is at fault here, I think that’s not helpful,” Rutte said. “But at least step by step, we try to make progress.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius meet in Kyiv on Thursday.SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images
Also on Thursday, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced visit, noting the stepped-up Russian attacks send a message from Moscow that it has “no interest in a peaceful solution at present,” according to German news agency dpa.
Pistorius said his visit underlines that the new German government continues to stand by Ukraine.
“Of course this will also be about how the support of Germany and other Europeans will look in future – what we can do, for example, in the area of industrial co-operation, but also other support,” he said.