Ukraine has lost 45,100 soldiers on the battlefield since Russia’s all-out invasion began nearly three years ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan published on YouTube late on Tuesday, Zelensky put the number of injured soldiers at 390,000.
The figures cannot be independently confirmed. While both Ukraine and Russia report enemy losses daily, they rarely disclose their own casualty numbers.
It is generally accepted that both sides play down their own losses and exaggerate those of the enemy.
Western intelligence services estimate up to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and more than twice as many Russian soldiers have died since Moscow launched the war.
In addition, there are thousands of civilian casualties, mainly on the Ukrainian side.
Zelensky also said he is willing to enter into direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the interview with Morgan.
In addition to Ukraine and Russia, the United States and Europe should also be involved in the talks, Zelensky said.
It was unclear whether Zelensky was referring to the European Union or to individual member states.
“If this is the only way to bring peace to the people of Ukraine and to avoid further loss of life, we will definitely go to this meeting with these four participants,” he said.
“I will not be nice to him, I consider him an enemy, and frankly, I think he considers me an enemy too,” Zelensky added.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov quickly dismissed Zelensky’s comments as “empty talk,” telling the Russian state news agency TASS that Zelensky had banned himself from negotiating with Putin.
Peskov was referring to a decree signed by Zelensky in September 2022, after Russia annexed the four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson.
While the decree does not prohibit negotiations with the Russian leader, it states that they are impossible in view of the situation. Zelensky recently said the document was intended to prevent potential separatism because Moscow was looking for unofficial communication channels with Ukraine at that time.
In his conversation with Morgan, Zelensky also raised the issue of security guarantees, asking “What support package, what missiles [will we get]? Or will we get nuclear missiles? Then we should be given nuclear missiles.”
Peskov responded that “such statements and remarks border on madness.”
Ukraine surrendered the last Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory in 1994 in return for vague security assurances from Moscow, London and Washington. Zelensky recently described this as a mistake.
Russian authorities said on Wednesday that a Ukrainian drone attack had set a fuel depot on fire in the southern Krasnodar region.
Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev wrote on Telegram that the drone attack had been repelled but that debris fell on a tank and sparked a fire.
Authorities said that the fire had been extinguished and there were no casualties. No information was provided on the extent of the damage.
The Ukrainian general staff later confirmed the attack.
Ukraine often attacks targets inside Russia, including energy and logistics facilities that help enable Moscow to wage the war.
In Ukraine, four civilians and three police officers were injured in a Russian drone attack in the southern region of Kherson, according to the local public prosecutor’s office.
Russia attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 104 drones overnight, the Ukrainian military said on Wednesday. Of these, 57 were shot down. The location of 42 drones was lost.
Russian and Ukraine have exchanged a total of 300 prisoners – 150 from each side – the Russian Defence Ministry announced on Wednesday.
Zelensky confirmed the exchange on X, writing that “some of these men have been in captivity for over two years.”
Zelensky said the prisoners returned from Russian captivity were members of the fleet who had taken part in the defence of Mariupol, soldiers from the army, air force and paratroopers.
Members of the national guard, border police and the territorial defence force, which consists of volunteers and reservists, as well as one police officer, were also released.
The United Arab Emirates is said to have acted as a mediator for the swap.
Prisoner exchanges have been running smoothly despite the lack of substantial talks on a peace solution to the war. Such exchanges are practically the only diplomatic channel of communication that remains between Kiev and Moscow.