Seven weeks after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, it was still the same it is difficult to establish an exact balance of civilian and military losses. But both the UN and the Russian and Ukrainian authorities are giving some clues.

The figures provided by the United Nations are, as in other conflicts in the world, taken as a reference for civilian victims of the war in Ukraine.

UN counts on Tuesday “4,450 civilians were killed in the country: 1,892 dead and 2,558 injured “since Feb. 24, but he specified that he believes” that the real numbers are higher. “

Hard test

The United Nations mentioned Difficulty in collecting information on the ground and to verify established balances. As a result, the organization wants to change its methodology.

The next balances provided by the UN will show “a realistic estimate of the true number of victims of the conflict,” Uladzimir Shcherbau, head of the UN mission in charge of counting conflict victims, declared last week.

Although it serves as a reference for civilian casualties, the UN does not provide information on military losses.

The defense ministries of both sides regularly offer data on killed enemy soldiers that cannot be independently verified by the AFP.

Ukraine claimed on Tuesday to have killed 19,600 Russian soldiers since the aggression began. Moscow, for its part, put the death toll among Ukrainian troops on March 25 at 14,000.

Regarding their own losses, both countries are more cautious.

After a long silence on the issue, Russia said on March 25 it had lost 1,351 soldiers in this war.

“Important casualties”

“We have a huge casualty with the troops and it’s a huge tragedy for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told Britain’s Sky News in an interview on April 7.

Ukraine has also identified casualties among its troops, but so far has not provided accurate data.

Following the Kremlin’s announcement about the withdrawal of its forces from the kyiv region to focus on the east of the country, the Ukrainians regained control of all cities located outside the capital.

They all stayed destroyed in battle and they were the scene of the “massacres”, say Ukrainian authorities who accuse Moscow of “war crimes”.

Russia, for its part, has denounced a “set-up” arranged by kyiv to hurt it.

More bodies near kyiv

Ukrainian police said Tuesday they had found 720 bodies no life in kyiv region.

In Bucha, northwest of the capital, hundreds of bodies were discovered in late March, some with their hands tied behind their backs.

Pictures of a street where about twenty corpses, seen by the AFP, have traveled the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called it “false information”.

But the Ukrainian authorities claim that there is proof of similar situation in other cities where they regained control.

Outside the kyiv region, in Chernigov, near the Belarus border, more than 700 people have been killed since the fighting began.

And in Severodonetsk (east), authorities noted that 400 civilians were buried by the war.

The operations of mining and the recovery of other towns by the Ukrainian army could increase this balance.

Victims of Mariupol

But where human losses are feared to be highest is in Mariupol, a large city in southeastern Ukraine that has been besieged for more than 40 days by Russian troops.

Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky accused Russia of being responsible for the deaths of “tens of thousands” of people at this strategic port on the Sea of ​​Azov.

Donetsk region governor Pavlo Kirilenko estimated that 20,000 to 22,000 people were killed in the fighting in Mariupol.

At the beginning of March, Ukrainian authorities had already spoken of at least 5,000 deaths.

The person in charge of human rights of the Ukrainian Parliament, Liudmila Denisova, has accused Russia of wanting to falsify the balance of victims by using thirteen mobile crematoria to burn “the bodies of civilians in the streets.”

Source: AFP

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