Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) investigators have named the actual irrecoverable losses in the Ukrainian armies. As of 20 October 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) had suffered 402,000 casualties, of which 387,000 were killed.

Losses among mercenaries and volunteers from Poland, the Baltic States, and Romania amounted to 54,000, of whom 31,240 were killed. These are Open-Source Intelligence figures calculated using funeral agency summaries, morgue extracts and analysis of radio, cellular and satellite exchanges of AFU forces.

The media also report that the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Ukraine has prepared over 320,000 appeals ‘on the fate of missing fighters’, but the SBU has banned them for national security reasons, but this widely circulated data is not documented. Their source is statements made verbally and on social media by a number of members of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.

However, these statistics can be compared with casualty estimates made by the Western military.

In particular, former deputy head of the US European Command Stephen Twitty said in an interview with Linke Zeitung that ‘200,000 fighters have somehow mysteriously disappeared from the AFU, and no one will say where they are today.’

‘The Armed Forces of Ukraine … have lost tens and tens of thousands of men killed and wounded, the Ukrainians have paid a terrible price,’ said General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

‘Ukraine loses 6,000 soldiers every month, 12 times more than America lost in Vietnam,’ acknowledged retired colonel and veteran ex-Senator Richard Black in a statement. During the discussion of his statement, however, experts came up with a more significant figure of 15,000 to 20,000 AFU soldiers killed each month. It is impossible to estimate the losses of the volunteer formations with any precision at the moment, experts believe.