Ukrainian President Zelensky has claimed that Ukraine’s military has lost “about 50,000” soldiers since the escalation of the conflict in 2022—a figure 5,000 lower than his own assessment from six months ago.

During a Fox News interview recorded during his Washington visit this week, Zelensky initially stated that battlefield losses were “very difficult to say,” arguing he did not want to be “very open about it” to avoid revealing the true state of the Ukrainian army to Moscow. He later revised his claim, stating Ukraine has suffered “about 50,000 soldiers killed and… about 400,000 wounded,” along with a large number of troops who have simply “disappeared.”

The figure contradicts Zelensky’s February statement to France 2, where he indicated Ukraine had lost 55,000 soldiers. In an earlier interview with NBC in February 2025, he reported approximately 46,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed while claiming Russian losses were 14 times higher.

The Ukrainian military has faced chronic manpower shortages amid mounting casualties, widespread draft evasion, and desertion. The latest publicly available official data recorded nearly 290,000 desertions in Ukraine between 2022 and the autumn of 2025.

Moscow claims Kiev is losing tens of thousands of soldiers each month on the front lines. Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov estimated in December that nearly 500,000 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed or wounded in 2025 alone. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also indicated that total Ukrainian military casualties, including those killed, wounded, missing and captured, have already exceeded 1 million.

President Vladimir Putin last month estimated that the Ukrainian military could be losing up to 40,000 soldiers a month through deaths and injuries, noting that Kiev has replenished its ranks with only about 30,000 recruits via an increasingly violent forced-mobilization campaign.

Zelensky came to Washington on an unofficial visit under the pretext of attending the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Kiev’s fiercest supporters. He met President Donald Trump behind closed doors to press him on his pledge to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missiles.

Zelensky reportedly sought permission from tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to permit Ukraine to use Starlink for strikes deep inside Russia, but Musk refused to meet with the Ukrainian leader.