Ukraine top brass admits to 9,000 troop casualties in war

KYIV • Nearly 9,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in the war with Russia, the head of Ukraine's armed forces said yesterday, the first-ever toll given by the military's top brass since Russia's invasion on Feb 24.

General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, told a conference held to honour military veterans and the families of those killed that children needed protection in several parts of the country, including the capital Kyiv.

"They really do not understand anything that is going on and definitely need protection... because their father has gone to the front and possibly is among the almost 9,000 heroes who have been killed," he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky told the conference that about one million people were defending the country as part of Ukraine's armed forces or other services. The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces has put the Russian military death toll at 45,400.

Russia has not said how many of its soldiers have been killed.

The new casualty figures came as the Ukrainian capital banned public celebrations this week to commemorate independence from Russian-dominated Soviet rule because of the possibility of rocket attacks, according to a document published by the Kyiv military administration and signed by its head Mykola Zhyrnov.

The second-largest city, Kharkiv, has also declared a curfew owing to a heightened threat of Russian attacks, the local authorities said.

Near front lines in the south of the country, Ukraine said Russia fired rockets into several southern Ukrainian towns north and west of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, captured by Russian forces shortly after they invaded Ukraine in February.

Artillery and rocket fire in the region of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor complex, on the Russian-occupied south bank of the Dnipro River, has stirred fears of a nuclear disaster and led to calls for the surrounding area to be demilitarised.

Overnight Russian rocket salvos into Nikopol city - across the Dnipro from the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is situated - and Krivyi Rih and Synelnykovsky districts injured at least four people, regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram yesterday.

In its morning update yesterday, Ukraine's General Staff said Russian forces had made incremental advances into the Blahodatne area in the direction of Mykolaiv.

Russia was also trying to regain momentum towards Pisky, Bakhmut and Kramatorsk, key towns in Donetsk province which - along with neighbouring Luhansk, captured by Moscow's forces earlier in the summer - comprise the eastern Donbas region.

Russian artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems hammered the areas of Soledar, Zaytseve and Bilohorivka near Bakhmut, the Ukrainian military command's update said.

At least two civilians were killed, the regional administration said.

Meanwhile, Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, yesterday accused Ukraine's secret services of killing Ms Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist, Russian news agencies reported.

Ms Dugina, whose father is prominent ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed last Saturday evening when a suspected explosive device blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, Russian investigators said. Ukraine has denied involvement.

The FSB said the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian woman born in 1979, whom it named as Natalia Vovk.

It said the woman and her teenage daughter had arrived in Russia in July and spent a month preparing the attack by renting an apartment in the same housing block and researching Ms Dugina's lifestyle, said an FSB statement carried by Russian news agencies.

The assailant had last Saturday evening attended an event outside Moscow that Ms Dugina and her father were also at, before carrying out a "controlled explosion" of Ms Dugina's car, and fleeing to Estonia, the FSB was quoted as saying.

REUTERS, BLOOMBERG