Ukraine war casualties

This page tries to document and make sense of the victim numbers claimed by the parties to the civil war in the eastern parts of Ukraine and organizations beyond that.

Russian sources
Novorossiyan and pro-Russian sources claim the number of nationalist KIA to be over 30,000.

34,921
This summary lists 34,921 killed by June 2015: A more detailed source is here: Putin in 2021
 * СВОДКА ОБЩИХ ПОТЕРЬ УКРАИНЫ на 09.06.2015 г.
 * Сводка общих потерь Украины - 28.1 2015
 * Putin: What is Happening in Donbass Resembles Genocide - Sputnik, December 9, 2021
 * ''The war in Donbass has led to the deaths of as many as 31,000 people, with over 2.5 million residents of the region forced to flee their homes, close to 1 million of them to neighbouring Russia.

UN numbers
According to "very conservative" estimates of the UN OHCHR as of August 10, 2,086 people have been killed and almost 5,000 wounded, nearly doubling the numbers of casualties since the last estimate of 1,129 on July 26. On August 28, the UN gave the number of killed as 2,220, among them 23 children. A day later, Ivan Simonovic, U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, told journalists that the current number of killed is 2,593, not counting the victims of the Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

Claims of the Ukrainian Government
The Ukrainian government has been shy to report numbers of casualties in their "Anti-Terrorist Operations" staying in the hundreds until mid-August. Increasingly getting under pressure not least by mothers waiting to hear from their sons for months.

Oleh Lyashko & Semyon Semchenko
At least 8000 dead hidden.


 * Others
 * ''"We all remember the queues at the military recruitment stations, when everybody wanted to go to defend and to fight the Motherland, said Kolesnik. — Where are these queues now? These queues were killed in the cauldrons. They were killed in DAP, they were killed in Ilovaysk. They were killed in Debaltsevo.
 * — Nikolay Kolesnik - curator of the territorial defense battalion "Krivbas" - August 2015

Claims of Novorossiya

 * Ukrainian losses throughout Donbass conflict make 30,000 soldiers - DONi News Agency, April 14, 2017
 * ''The Ukrainian army has lost about 30 thousand personnel since the outset of the military conflict in Donbass, stated the DPR Head, Alexander Zakharchenko, during this day’s Q&A session. During hostilities Ukrainian fighters "were uncontrollably burying their dead into unmarked common graves and then levelling them to the ground."

2014
Rebels claim loyalist's radio intercept, claiming that 483 loyalist soldiers were killed, more than 700 wounded, just near Donetsk, on Aug 19 2014. They claim the figure on the radio intercept is more than what they themselves had previously reported.

January 15, 2015: Zakharchenko claims 1500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the Ilovaisk Cauldron.
 * DPR PM Zakharchenko argues with UAF officer and gives an interview

German estimates

 * Ukraine Death Toll Near 50,000, Says Major German Daily (translated from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) - Feb 9, 2015
 * ''According to official figures, the war in East Ukraine has killed 1,200 soldiers and 5,400 civilians. But German security circles think it may be almost ten times as many


 * 50,000 casualties in Ukraine? German intel calls Kiev’s 6k toll ‘not credible’ - Tiglathpalasar III, February 9, 2015

Non-Battle Casualties

 * Ukrainian Army's Non-Battle Casualties Exceeded 10,000 Since 2014 - Prosecutor - Sputnik, October 28, 2017

Other

 * A facebook account under the name and picture of Russian professor and political scientist Igor Panarin has come up with a detailed statistic of losses of Ukrainian forces, alleging a total of 17,672 "killed and wounded" and an additional 11,810 "deserters and missing" up until August 19.


 * According to Reliefweb At least 2,119 (including at least 20 children) killed and 5,043 (including at least 30 children) wounded in east Ukraine as of 13 August; on average, at least 60 persons a day have been killed or wounded since mid-April1


 * Continuing shelling in Donetsk and Luhansk increases number of displaced.


 * More than 22,000 people have fled Donetsk and Luhansk in the last five days compared to 6,200 in the week of 1 to 8 August).


 * Ultimate fiasco of the Ukrainian army - Oriental Review, Nov 7, 2015
 * ''During the conflict in the Donbass, Ukraine lost about 24,000 soldiers in combat operations, almost 54,000 were wounded, and over 9,000 have gone missing. Deaths from non-combat-related fatalities totaled 1,309, including 873 suicides.


 * Tatzhit Mihailovich: 25,000
 * Seeing through the doublethink: Primary evidence on losses of the combatants at Donbass - March 12, 2015 (Original)

Ivan Katchanovski
On Facebook on September 8, 2015
 * ''The estimated number of casualties of the civil war in Donbas is now about 10 thousand, about half of them civilians. My estimate is based on the latest UN report of the minimum of 7,883 confirmed casualties in Donbas as of August 15, 2015. It is adjusted by an estimate of presumed casualties among reported 1,200-2,000 missing civilians and Ukrainian armed forces members and undercounted casualties among separatists, Russian volunteers, and Russian regular troops. The number of civilian casualties is about 5,000, including 298 passengers and crew of the Malaysian airliner, which was likely shot down by separatists. The UN report provides a break-down of casualties confirming de facto that the absolute majority of civilians were killed as result of shelling of the separatist-controlled part of Donbas by the Ukrainian forces and far-right controlled police, the National Guard, and paramilitary units.
 * ''The estimated number of killed members of the Ukrainian military, National Guard, police, Security Service, border guards, and paramilitary units is around 3,000. The estimate is based on official reports of 2,300 casualties among the Ukrainian armed forces, about 200 presumed casualties among 283 missing soldiers, and 300 casualties among the National Guard and the police. The number of killed members of armed separatists units, including Russian volunteers, is about 2,000, since they had an advantage of mainly defensive operations and no large-scale casualties from encirclements and shot down military planes and helicopters. The rough estimate of killed Russian regular troops, primarily involved in fighting in August 2014 and February 2015, is about 100.

Oleg Tsarov

 * Script for Future Coup in Ukraine: Poroshenko Fired by Washington - News-Front, August 23, 2016
 * ''I know the figures. They are monstrous. I will not name the source, but he&#8217;s serious. About 100,000 people died during the conflict in Ukraine. It already almost "caught up" Yugoslavia. Therefore, the ideal situation is when the conflict is resolved outside of Ukraine. In Syria, during elections in the United States, by any political bargaining between world powers. What is happening now in Syria, Turkey, and other regions is in fact the solution to the Ukrainian question outside the territory of Ukraine.

POW
UAF General-Colonel Volodomyr Ruban (Володимир Рубан) estimates the number of prisoners still held by rebels at around 300 people, see around 18.31 @. In the past, he managed to exchange around 65 people. Urgency to speed the process is emphasized.

Internally displaced
According to the UN HCR, by Sptember 2, 2014 at least 260,000 people had been internally displaced in Ukraine, more than doubling from 117,000 a month earlier. Due to the lack of a central registration system, which the UN had urged Kiev to establish weeks earlier, the numbers are likely higher. A UN HCR map of the distribution of internally displaced shows that around 50,000 of them are displaced inside the Eastern provinces subject to the "Anti-Terror Operation".

Externally displaced
As of August 21, according to UN numbers 14,600 Ukrainians fled to Poland and 13,800 to Belarus. As of Septmeber 2, 814,000 left to Russia, the bulk under the visa-free regime, but more than 200,000 of them in contact with the Federal Migration Service. Of the 168,677 of the latter who had done so by August 5, the UN HCR details that
 * These included 6,347 for refugee status, 48,914 for temporary asylum, 28,134 for citizenship, 59,858 for temporary residence, 19,943 for residence permits and 5,481 under the programme of resettlement of compatriots.

Investigations
Russian Investigative Committee opened 54 criminal cases, gathered 2500 volumes of evidence. It is  ready to transfer these materials to  any international court. But it will continue its investigation. (Translated from Russian)

Analysis

 * Febrero 2018: Dos años de guerra de desgaste, balance y análisis (February 2018: Two years of attrition war, balance and analysis) - Zhukov, Guerra en Ucraina, February 11, 2018