The European Commission has deleted references to the Ukrainians having lost 100,000 military personnel in a speech by President Ursula von der Leyen.
The head of the European Union’s unelected executive-cum-legislature — the European Parliament can debate and votes on EU laws initiated by the Commission, but not initiate or repeal EU laws itself — made the remarks in a speech focused on EU proposals for a UN-backed court to make Russia “pay for its horrific crimes” and an “international agreement with our partners” on using frozen Russian assets to redevelop Ukraine.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought death, destruction and untold suffering. We all remember the horrors of Bucha. It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date. Russia must pay for its heinous crimes, including the crime of aggression against a sovereign state,” she said.
But the references to Ukrainian combat losses caused considerable consternation in Kyiv (Kiev), which has not made any such information public and regards “the losses of the Ukrainian army [as] official information… subject to restrictions on publication.”
The remarks were excised from a video recording and official transcript of the speech within hours, and the deputy chief spokeswoman of the EU’s dubiously titled Director for Political Communication subsequently claimed that they had been inaccurate and “should have referred to casualties, i.e. both killed and injured” on social media.
The fiasco follows controversial American general Mark Milley offering similar estimates of Ukrainian losses in seemingly off-the-cuff remarks in November.
“You’re looking at well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded,” Milley said in comments quoted by CNN.
“Same thing probably on the Ukrainian side,” he added.
The Ukrainian military, for its part, currently puts Russian losses at a little under 90,000 — although this may be an estimate of fatalities only — and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has suggested Russian losses are ten times higher than Ukrainian losses.
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