At least 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers have died in the war against Russia, a fraction of Russia’s casualties amid surprising Ukrainian resistance, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
The Ukrainian army has about 10,000 injured soldiers, and it is “hard to say how many will survive,” an estimate that is only half of the 19,000 to 20,000 Russian soldiers believed to be dead, Zelensky added. The number of civilian deaths after the Russians blocked several cities is currently unknown, as the towns are “all destroyed” and there are “no people there,” the Ukrainian leader told CNN.
“All of us want to fight, but we all have to do our best for this war not to be endless,” Zelensky said Friday, according to a translation provided by the network. “The longer it is, the more we would lose.”
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Zelensky mourned the human toll the war has taken, saying he couldn’t watch the video depicting “a family’s tragedy” of a Ukrainian mother crying over her dead son because “all you want after [watching] this is revenge and to kill.”
But the Ukrainian president grew steely when discussing property damages, saying Thursday’s sinking of Moskva, a Russian warship, was “not a tragedy for us.” Zelensky did not take responsibility for the sinking, saying only, “It does not exist anymore,” though Ukrainian forces hit the Russian flagship with two Neptune missiles, the Pentagon said Friday.
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Over 900 civilian corpses were discovered near Kyiv since Russia’s drawback from western Ukraine, with the body count expected to rise as Ukrainians sift through the rubble.
At least 350 corpses were discovered in Bucha, Ukraine, Andriy Nebytov, the leader of Kyiv’s regional police force, said Friday.
