{"id":281716,"date":"2026-02-05T07:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T07:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281716\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T07:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T07:38:07","slug":"number-of-ukrainians-killed-in-war-with-russia-estimated-at-55000-says-zelenskiy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/281716\/","title":{"rendered":"Number of Ukrainians killed in war with Russia estimated at 55,000, says Zelenskiy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on \u200dthe battlefield as a result of the country\u2019s war with Russia<\/a> is estimated at \u200c55,000, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> told France \u20602 TV on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Ukraine, officially \u200cthe \u200bnumber \u200dof soldiers killed on the battlefield \u2013 either professionals or those conscripted \u2013 is 55,000,\u201d said Zelenskiy, \u2060in a pre-recorded interview that \u2060was broadcast on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy, \u2060whose comments were translated into French, added that on top \u200dof that casualty figure was a \u201clarge number of people\u201d considered officially missing.<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy had previously cited a figure for Ukrainian war dead in an interview with \u200cthe US<\/a> \u200ctelevision network NBC in February 2025, saying that more than 46,000 \u200cUkrainian servicemen had been killed on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian and Russian<\/a> officials wrapped up a \u201cproductive\u201d first day of new US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi, Kyiv\u2019s lead negotiator said, as fighting in \u200dEurope\u2019s biggest conflict<\/a> since the second World War raged on.<\/p>\n

The two-day trilateral meetings come after Zelenskiy said Russia had exploited a US-backed energy truce last week to stockpile munitions, attacking Ukraine with a \u200drecord number of ballistic missiles on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work was substantive and productive, focused on concrete steps and practical solutions,\u201d Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine\u2019s national security and defence council, wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Shortly after the talks began, Russian forces struck a crowded market in eastern Ukraine with cluster munitions, killing at least seven people and wounding 15, the Donetsk region\u2019s governor Vadym Filashkin said.<\/p>\n

Umerov said he would \u200cprepare a report for Zelenskiy, and talks were expected to continue on Thursday, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.<\/p>\n

Photographs released earlier in the day by the United Arab Emirates<\/a>\u2019 (UAE) foreign ministry showed the \u2060three delegations sitting around a U-shaped table, with US officials seated at the centre, including special envoy Steve Witkoff and US president Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> son-in-law \u200cJared \u200bKushner.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0A world without nuclear arms control beginsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s administration has pushed both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the four-year-old war, but the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with US officials.<\/p>\n

The most sensitive issues are Moscow\u2019s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe\u2019s largest, which \u2060sits in a Russian-occupied area.<\/p>\n

Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops out of all of the Donetsk region, including a belt of heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine\u2019s \u2060strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.<\/p>\n

Ukraine said the \u2060conflict should be frozen along the current front line and has rejected any unilateral pullback of its forces.<\/p>\n

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russian troops would keep fighting until Kyiv made \u201cdecisions\u201d that could bring the war to an end.<\/p>\n

Russia currently occupies about \u200d20 per cent of Ukraine\u2019s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is not winning its war against Ukraine,\u201d Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha told online media outlet Liga on Tuesday. He argued that Moscow was paying a heavy price in terms of battlefield casualties and economic harm for small territorial advances.<\/p>\n

Polls show that the majority of Ukrainians oppose a deal that hands Moscow more land. Kyiv residents told Reuters on Wednesday they were sceptical that the new round of talks would bring any major breakthroughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s hope that it will change [something], of course. But I don\u2019t believe it will change anything now,\u201d \u200cSerhii (38) a taxi driver, told Reuters. \u201cWe \u200cwill not give in, and they will not give in either.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first round of talks was held in the UAE last month, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv.<\/p>\n

Chinese<\/a> president Xi Jinping<\/a> and Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a> hailed their ties during a video call \u200con Wednesday held in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Moscow\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin said Xi \u2013 who it said supported this week\u2019s talks \u2013 had invited Putin to China in the coming \u2060months. Beijing has sought to cast itself as a peacemaker in the war and is a close ally of Moscow, which is increasingly struggling to fund its vast war economy.<\/p>\n

A source close to the government told Reuters that Russia\u2019s public deficit could balloon to almost triple the official target by end-2026. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on \u200dthe battlefield as a result of the country\u2019s war with Russia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[114,969,42,43,3589,40,38,41,39,9688,36222,115,5936,58419,606,12139],"class_list":{"0":"post-281716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-china","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-top-news","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-topnews","16":"tag-topstories","17":"tag-ukraine-crisis","18":"tag-united-arab-emirates","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-vladimir-putin","21":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","22":"tag-x","23":"tag-xi-jinping"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}