A figure rarely revealed. Ukraine acknowledged on Monday that almost 9,000 of its soldiers had been killed since the beginning of the Russian invasion six months ago.
Speaking at a forum in kyiv, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Valery Zaluzhny, said that Ukrainian children needed special attention because their parents had gone to the front and “probably were among the almost 9,000 heroes who had been killed”. “.
This is one of the rare statements by Ukrainian officials about military losses in Kyiv in this war, which was launched on February 24 by Moscow and brought Ukraine to blood and fire. The previous estimate dates back to mid-April, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cited the figure of 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed and around 10,000 wounded since the start of the Russian offensive.
A “conventional” and “large-scale” war
While many European countries are supplying military equipment to Ukraine, the EU plans to organize a “training and assistance” mission to the Ukrainian army that would take place in neighboring countries, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, said on Monday. . .
The proposal will be discussed next week in Prague at the Council of Defense Ministers of the EU member countries.
“A war that lasts and seems to last requires an effort not only in the supply of material, but also in training and assistance in the organization of the army”, commented Josep Borrell during a press conference in Spain.
“We are facing a large-scale war,” “a conventional war” with “extraordinarily large means and hundreds of thousands of soldiers,” he explained. “This is not a small war”, insisted the High Representative of the EU, of Spanish nationality. “Ten million Ukrainians have left their country, it is as if 20% of Spaniards had left Spain.”
“We are at a time when the front is stabilizing. Even if the Russian military continues to attempt (limited) offensives, we see a loss of momentum; Moscow is in a defensive position across much of the front and part of its rear. in Ukraine,” Dimitri Minic, a researcher at the Russia/NIS Center at the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), told AFP.
100 soldiers killed on Monday according to Russia
Two US Army planes will fly over several countries in southeastern Europe on Monday, a new show of force to underline the “commitment” of the United States with NATO members in the context of the war in Ukraine, announced the American command. On Monday afternoon, UK-based B-52 Stratofortress bombers “will conduct low-level flybys of southeastern Europe,” the army said in a statement.
On the ground in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that its troops had killed up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers in three different locations in the Donetsk region, 30 in the Zaporizhia region, as well as 50 in the Mykolaiv region, in the east Ukraine.
Dozens of Ukrainian armored vehicles were destroyed there, along with eight command posts, a Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile launch system and six caches of weapons and ammunition for rockets and artillery, according to the ministry.
Ukraine denies involvement in Russian murder
The Russian security services (FSB) accused the Ukrainian “special services” on Monday of having killed the daughter of a reputed ideologue close to the Kremlin, who died on Saturday night in the explosion of his car near Moscow.
According to an FSB statement cited by Russian news agencies, the car driven by Daria Dougina was trapped by a woman of Ukrainian nationality born in 1979, who arrived in Russia in July with her youngest daughter. This Ukrainian woman then fled to Estonia with her daughter.
Journalist and political scientist born in 1992, Daria Douguina was the daughter of Alexandre Douguine, an ultra-nationalist ideologue and writer who promoted an expansionist doctrine and was a staunch supporter of the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Questioned on Saturday by Russian media believing that the target of the attack was in fact Alexander Dougin, Ukraine on Sunday denied any involvement in Dougina’s death.
“Ukraine certainly has nothing to do with the explosion (on Saturday), because we are not a criminal state,” said an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mikhaïlo Podoliak.
Source: BFM TV
