Trump often says thousands of Ukrainians and Russians die unnecessarily every week. Western intelligence agencies also publish estimates, which are impossible to verify.
The last time Zelensky gave an update on Ukraine’s casualties was in December 2024, when he put deaths at 43,000.
In his interview with French television, he said: “In Ukraine, officially the number of soldiers killed on the battlefield – either professionals or those conscripted – is 55,000.”
The official number of dead cited by Zelensky is considerably lower than Ukraine’s total losses. As he said himself, “a large number of people” are registered as missing.
As of six months ago, Ukraine’s interior ministry had recorded more than 70,000 people as officially missing – both soldiers and civilians – but the breakdown is never given.
The true figure may be higher – information about the number of dead is highly sensitive and affects morale.
Across Ukraine, military graves are prominent in all cemeteries – marked with blue and yellow national flags. They often have an image of the soldier in uniform engraved on the headstones.
We have also met mothers still searching for their sons, who never returned from battle.
Often, they cling to hope that the men are prisoners of war, captured and held in Russia somewhere but not on any official lists.
Access to Russian prisons for organisations like the Red Cross is highly restricted.
The alternative is that the missing men have been killed and their bodies not recovered from territory now controlled by Russia, or that their remains have not yet been identified using DNA testing.
Every so often, the two countries arrange an exchange of bodies – in addition to swapping prisoners of war – but there has been nothing at all since last August.