Ukraine has lost as many as 13,000 soldiers since Russia's invasion in February, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed.
"We have official estimates from the General Staff ... And they range from 10,000 ... to 13,000 dead," Mykhailo Podolyak told Ukraine's Channel 24 on Thursday.
Zelensky would make the official data public "when the right moment comes," he added.
The Ukrainian military has not confirmed such figures and it was a rare instance of a Ukrainian official providing such a count.
The last dates back to late August, when the head of the armed forces said that nearly 9,000 military personnel had been killed. In June, Podolyak said that up to 200 soldiers were dying each day, in some of the most intense fighting and bloodshed this year.
On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union's executive Commission, said 100,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed before her office corrected her comments – calling them inaccurate and saying that the figure referred to both killed and injured.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in September said 5,937 Russian troops had been killed in the nearly seven months of fighting to that point.
Both sides are suspected of minimizing their losses to avoid damaging the morale of their troops.
Last month, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that as many as 40,000 Ukrainian civilians and "well over" 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war so far. He added that it was the "same thing probably on the Ukrainian side."
Those figures – which could not be independently confirmed – are the most precise to date from the U.S. government.
The U.N. human rights office, in its latest weekly update published Monday, said it had recorded 6,655 civilians killed and 10,368 injured but has acknowledged that its tally includes only casualties that it has confirmed and likely far understates the actual toll.
Ukrainians have been bracing for freezing winter temperatures as Russia's campaign has recently hit infrastructure including power plants and electrical transformers, leaving many without heat, water and electricity.
Ukraine has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks since early October. The shelling has been especially intense in southern Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine's army reclaimed the southern city almost three weeks ago.
Local authorities said about two-thirds of the city of Kherson had electricity as of Thursday night, after new Russian strikes had cut power that had recently been restored.
