Zelensky Reveals Unexpected Advantage Over Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is claiming that his nation has an unexpected numbers advantage over the invading Russian Army.

Zelensky said during a recent interview with the German television channel ARD that Kyiv's military had at least 880,000 active personnel—significantly more than the 617,000 invading troops that Russian President Vladimir Putin said were fighting in Ukraine last week.

The Ukrainian president cited the personnel figure after being asked for his views on men who could not be drafted into the army because they left the country shortly after Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.

"We are grateful to those who returned to rebuild Ukraine," Zelensky said, according to a translation from Ukraine Today. "We have 880,000 [military personnel]; we have a million-strong army, in addition to 30 million citizens working, maybe even more."

"I can't say for sure because we don't know: 6.5 to 7.5 million people have left since the beginning [of the full-scale war]," he added.

Zelensky's claim differs greatly from a figure that he cited in a Telegram post on December 12, when he said that there were nearly 600,000 soldiers "of various branches of the military" fighting against Russia.

The data gathering and analysis platform Statista estimates that Ukraine's military includes approximately 900,000 personnel as of this month. Russia is said to have a force of 1.32 million, including personnel not deployed to Ukraine.

Vladislav Seleznev, the former head of the press service of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, claiming in a November interview with Ukrainian outlet TSN that there were 1.3 million people in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Russian Ministry of Defense via email on Monday.

Casualties have been mounting on both sides of the battlefield as the war nears its second anniversary.

The Ukrainian military claimed on Sunday that Russia had lost at least 6,080 soldiers during the previous week alone, while another 1,070 were allegedly lost by Monday.

Ukraine has claimed that over 250,000 Russian troops were lost during 2023, with around 360,000 lost during the entire war. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed last month that Ukraine lost a total of 383,000 soldiers, TASS reported.

Accurate casualty figures are notoriously difficult to determine during any war and Newsweek is unable to independently verify the numbers claimed by Ukraine and Russia.

Zelensky said during his ARD interview that Putin was treating his troops like expendable "pieces of meat," claiming that Russian military leadership does not care how many troops die during the war.

"The first year of the war, I don't think Russia used mathematics at all," Zelensky said. "It just threw away its people. They treat them like pieces of meat, and I'm not sure that fact bothers [their leadership]. One million, two million, three million... they don't care how many are going to die."

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