Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk region on Aug. 15. Photo: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Image
Nearly 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed throughout Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion of the country, Ukraine's military chief Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said Monday.
Why it matters: It's the first formal death toll provided by the Ukrainian military since the start of the invasion nearly six months ago, according to Reuters.
What they're saying: Zaluzhnyi, at a veteran's event held Monday, said numerous Ukrainian children need to be taken care of because “their father went to the front line and, perhaps, is one of those almost 9,000 heroes who died.”
- Zaluzhnyi did not provide anymore additional details about that figure, nor did he estimate how many Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded.
The big picture: A top Ukrainian official told Axios' Dave Lawler in June that up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers were being either killed or wounded each day in the Donbas region of eastern at that time.
- CIA Director Bill Burns said in July that U.S. intelligence estimated at that time that 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine "and maybe three times that wounded."
- Russia has not officially disclosed how many of its troops have been killed, though Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted in April that its losses have been “significant."
- The United Nations Human Rights Council currently estimates that 5,587 Ukrainian civilians have been killed throughout the invasion and 7,890 have been injured, though it stressed that it believes that the actual number of civilian casualities is "considerably higher."
Go deeper: The latest on Russia's invasion of Ukraine