On August 19, 2023, Georgian– and Russian-language Facebook users published a screenshot of an English-language article titled “Troop deaths and injuries in Ukraine War near 500,000, US Officials say.” According to the description attached to the distributed posts, Western publications, the world’s leading newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Reuters, CBC, and the New York Post, write that the losses of Ukraine are equal to about 500,000, and according to the same newspapers, the loss of the Russians ranges between 250,000 and 300,000. According to the Georgian-language post, publishing such information by Ukraine’s partners means that Zelensky’s blackmail to force him to sit on the negotiation table has begun, and it is both a political and a physical death sentence for the Ukrainian president.
The claim that, according to Western publications, Ukraine lost up to 500,000 soldiers in the war, is false. Several Western publications, citing The New York Times, write that 500,000 is the total number of dead and wounded soldiers on both sides, and that the Russian side’s losses are about 300,000.
The screenshot shared on Facebook is from the August 18 article in The New York Times. The article notes that according to senior US officials, the number of dead and wounded soldiers on both sides has reached 500,000 in the 18 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to the article, it is difficult to calculate the number of casualties, because Moscow significantly reduces the number of its own losses, and Ukraine does not publish this information at all. However, according to a rough calculation, Russian losses are close to 300,000, of which 120,000 are killed, and 170 to 180 thousand are wounded. Ukraine has lost 70,000 soldiers in the war, according to US officials, and the number of wounded is between 100,000 and 120,000.
The publications mentioned in the posts: The Guardian, Reuters, CBC, and The New York Post, reported on the losses of Russia and Ukraine based on The New York Times.
Accordingly, the information disseminated on Facebook that the Western editions report 500,000 losses from Ukraine and 300,000 losses on the Russian side is false.
About the Sources
Georgian-language Facebook user Eduard Jishkariani often publishes anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian content, including disinformation. “Myth Detector” has debunked the false information disseminated by Jishkariani a number of times in the past.
The Russian-language Facebook user Alex Bond has regularly published disinformation with anti-Ukrainian content since the emergence of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
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