The China Mail - Ukraine war death toll: huge but not fully known

But as US President Donald Trump steps up efforts to secure a ceasefire to end the bloodshed, the true death toll of the three-year conflict remains unknown.

Here is an overview of what we know and what we don't know:

- Military secrets -

Both Moscow and Kyiv typically do not disclose their military losses and AFP does not cite each camp's claims on their adversary's losses.

In a rare public estimate, President Volodymyr Zelensky told US news outlet NBC over the weekend that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and some 380,000 wounded.

But independent Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Butusov said in December 2024 that his army sources estimated some 70,000 dead and 35,000 missing.

Several Western media, citing European and US sources, have reported numbers that hugely vary -- with estimates ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 Ukrainians killed in combat.

Russia has not announced its military deaths since September 2022, when it said fewer than 6,000 soldiers had been killed -- a figure believed to be vastly lower than reality.

Several independent investigations using open sources, such as the publication of death announcements by local officials and family members, have reported massive death tolls for Moscow's army.

The Russian website Mediazona and the BBC's Russian service said they had identified the names of some 91,000 killed Russian soldiers, and said the actual toll could yet be "considerably higher".

At the end of 2024, the then US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, spoke of 700,000 Russian soldiers that were killed or wounded.

Added to this is the death toll of North Korean soldiers who have fought for Russia. Seoul says 1,100 of them have been killed while Kyiv says that figure is closer to 3,000.

- Unknown civilian toll -

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed -- but that toll is also complicated.

Zelensky said at the start of February that "tens of thousands of (Ukrainian) civilians" had been killed by Russia during the invasion.

But any count of Ukrainian civilian deaths remains "approximate", a senior presidential official told AFP, speaking anonymously.

The UN's Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has identified 12,500 civilians killed and some 28,400 others that were wounded.

But the mission's director, Danielle Bell, said that the "actual number is likely to be much, much higher" given international organisations have no access to the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine.

In the 2022 Russian siege of Mariupol alone, tens of thousands are believed to have died, with different Ukrainian officials estimating tolls of between 20,000 to 80,000.

The source in the Ukrainian presidency told AFP a human toll will only be "clear" if Ukraine one day has access to the occupied territories, where it believes there are "mass graves."

Russia does also not disclose the toll of civilians killed on its territory, reporting them case by case during individual Ukrainian strikes.

Some 350 civilians have been killed in Russia's Kursk border region -- where Kyiv launched an incursion in August -- and in the Belgorod region, regularly under Ukrainian attack, according to tolls published by both regional governments at the end of 2024.

- Tens of thousands missing -

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said this month that it was working on the files of 50,000 missing people -- both civilians and fighters from both sides.

"Since February 2024, the number of open cases of missing persons has more than doubled," the head of its special bureau Central Tracing Agency (CTA) Dusan Vujasanin noted.

ICRC's spokesman has said that the figures are "very likely the tip of the iceberg."

Ukrainian authorities have established a register of missing people, which as of February 2025 had some 63,000 names.

Russia has not publicised any number of missing people.

But its deputy defence minister, Anna Tsivilyova, had said during a government meeting in November that Moscow has received 48,000 demands for DNA tests from family members of missing soldiers.

Y.Parker--ThChM