Verification within Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program
A video is being spread online in which former MP Ihor Mosiichuk claims that the military losses of Ukraine’s Defense Forces allegedly exceed 500,000. In another video, he specifies that this figure includes both killed and wounded personnel.
This claim is unfounded. Ihor Mosiichuk is not a reliable source, as he has repeatedly disseminated disinformation and narratives of Russian propaganda. Accurate data on Ukrainian losses is unknown. Neither Ukrainian nor Western sources have reported Defense Forces losses exceeding 500,000 killed and wounded.
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Ihor Mosiichuk is a former Member of Parliament. In 2014, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada as a member of the Radical Party of Oleh Liashko. In 2019, Mosiychuk left Liashko’s party and ran for the new parliamentary convocation as an independent candidate but later withdrew his candidacy.
Ihor Mosiichuk is not a trustworthy source of information — he has repeatedly spread disinformation and narratives of Russian propaganda. For instance, Mosiychuk promoted claims about the illegitimacy of President Zelenskyi and spread fake that the International Criminal Court could prosecute Ukrainian military personnel after ratifying the Rome Statute. Previously, we debunked his false claim that a Russian missile strike on Poltava on September 3, 2024, resulted in up to 700 Ukrainian military casualties.
Estimates of losses in Western media
The exact number of killed and wounded soldiers in the Russian-Ukrainian war remains unknown at the time of publication. Neither Ukraine nor Russia publicly disclose their losses. Periodically, Western media publish estimates based on anonymous sources, but it is challenging to verify the expertise of these speakers or the methodology used for calculations. Additionally, estimates vary widely across different media outlets, even when articles are published around the same time.
On September 17, 2024, The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources “familiar with the situation”, reported combined losses for both sides at 1 million. According to this report, Ukrainian military deaths amounted to 80,000, with 400,000 wounded. The same report cited Western intelligence estimates of Russian losses: nearly 200,000 dead and 400,000 wounded.
On October 10, The New York Times, referencing an unnamed U.S. official, reported Russian losses at 615,000: 115,000 killed and 500,000 wounded. The same source stated that Ukraine had lost over 57,500 killed and 250,000 wounded.
Estimates of losses in Ukrainian sources
Based on publicly available data, the authors of the Book of Memory of the Fallen for Ukraine documented 24,500 known Ukrainian military deaths, 15,000 missing persons, and 3,400 prisoners from February 24, 2022, to November 14, 2023. According to researchers, the identified fatalities account for at least 70% of total combat and non-combat deaths in the Armed Forces, Security Service, and Interior Ministry, meaning the actual death toll could exceed 30,000. The number of wounded is estimated at 90,000–100,000, with the majority returning to service or planning to do so after recovery.
The Book of Memory of the Fallen for Ukraine is a project established on July 22, 2014. Its team tracked Ukraine’s combat and non-combat losses in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO)/Joint Forces Operation (JFO) zone and now investigates losses during the full-scale invasion.
A similar estimate was given by President Volodymyr Zelenskyi during a press conference on February 25, 2024, where he reported 31,000 Ukrainian military deaths over two years of the full-scale Russian invasion. According to Zelenskyi, Russian losses at that time amounted to 500,000 personnel, including 180,000 dead.
Former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and current ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, stated at a Chatham House conference on October 17, 2024, that Ukraine had lost over 30,000 soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands wounded.
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