UNFOUNDED: Over 76,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in the Kursk region

Information is being spread online claiming that during the operation in the Kursk region, the Defense Forces of Ukraine lost 76.6 thousand soldiers killed.

However, this claim is unfounded. According to official sources and international media, since the start of the full-scale war, the Defense Forces’ losses amount to between 46,000 and 100,000 killed, so the figure of 76,000 killed solely in the Kursk region appears unrealistic.

The figure of 76,000 killed soldiers solely in the Kursk region appears significantly exaggerated. As early as September 2024, The Wall Street Journal, citing a confidential Ukrainian assessment made earlier in the year, reported that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died since February 2022.

In November of the same year, The Economist also conducted a similar estimate based on data from intelligence reports, U.S. defense officials, researchers, and open-source intelligence. According to this data, in nearly three years of full-scale war, Defense Forces’ losses amounted to between 60,000 and 100,000 killed. In an interview with NBC News in February 2025, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi stated that over 46,000 soldiers were known to have been killed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

However, it is important to note that it is currently nearly impossible to fully verify the data provided by Volodymyr Zelenskyi or international media. Both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal do not provide references to all sources included in their estimates and state that their data is difficult to verify independently.

Even considering the highest of the cited estimates — 100,000 killed — it refers to losses over nearly three years of war (data as of November 2024). Therefore, information about 76,000 killed in just one region and over a much shorter period (nine months) appears illogical and unrealistic. Moreover, this number is nearly double the officially stated losses of the Ukrainian army. Russians deliberately inflate the statistics of killed Defense Forces members to demoralize Ukrainian society and simultaneously create the illusion of successful military actions for the domestic audience in the Russian Federation.

We have previously debunked the fake that the Institute for the Study of War allegedly called Ukraine’s actions in the Kursk region the most ineffective operation in the last 200 years.