Zelenskyy Tells U.N. Russia Lost Nearly 249,000 Troops This Year

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the United Nations General Assembly that Russia lost 248,964 troops, killed or badly wounded, on the battlefield in Ukraine from January through August.

Twenty-one countries have smaller populations than that eight-month total, Zelenskyy said, according to excerpts of the address he posted in a seven-part thread on X. The casualty figure and population comparison could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy also called for de-escalation steps before winter. If Russia continues to target Ukraine’s energy system and heating, he said, Ukraine will have “no choice but to make it painful for Russia too.”

Ukrainians understand this winter could be very harsh for them, he said. He added that no Russian official ever imagined “Army General Winter,” long on Russia’s side, would one day switch sides.

Russian generals have spent almost five years trying to carry out what Zelenskyy called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “crazy order” to seize Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

According to Zelenskyy, Putin recently promised representatives of the American president once again that he would take the region, saying he needed “just a few more months.” Zelenskyy put the number of such promises at probably 17 or 18 in five years, with the deadline moved each time, and predicted Putin “will fail this time too.” His account of Putin’s remarks could not be independently verified.

Russia has used more than 2,100 missiles of different types against Ukraine since the start of the year, more than 950 of them ballistic, Zelenskyy said. Over the same eight months, he added, Russia used 63,000 attack drones, including more than 7,700 jet-powered Shahed drones he described as truly destructive and dangerous.

He then asked the assembly whether other countries would survive a similar assault. “Ukraine has,” he said.

On Russia’s economy, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is hearing for the first time in Russia’s history that its oil industry is “running on fumes.” Oil itself is not Ukraine’s target, he said, nor are gasoline, diesel, factories or ports as such. The target instead is Russia’s ability to finance the war, drag it out and make it more brutal and destructive.

Zelenskyy also said Ukraine recently sent two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea. One of them tried to kill himself when he realized he would be captured, according to Zelenskyy, who said North Korea takes away its people’s freedom and drills into them that they must die no matter what. The transfer and the prisoner’s actions could not be independently confirmed.

“Do you really want to give such a force more time to learn how to wage war?” he asked.

Zelenskyy closed by linking an end to the war with slowing the rapid development of weapons, which he said has become a global threat. As early as next year, he warned, artificial intelligence, not only people, could begin deciding what happens on the battlefield.