US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused Ukraine of intentionally covering up the true number of deaths in the conflict with Russia. In an interview on the Lex Fridman podcast published on Tuesday, Trump claimed that “the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think” when the time comes to “iron out” the casualties.
Ukraine rarely publishes reports on the official civilian death toll, and the numbers are difficult to assess as no independent count has been made due to lack of access to the front line. The latest figures released in June last year put the number of civilian deaths at around 10,000 – however, Oleg Gavrych, a top aide to Vladimir Zelensky’s chief of staff, said at the time that the true figure could be five times higher.
Information about troop losses has also been hard to confirm, with Zelensky claiming earlier this year that it stood at around 31,000, while both Russian and foreign estimates indicate that it could be much higher.
“They lie about the numbers,” Trump claimed in the podcast. He did not explain why he believes Kiev is doing so, though it is considered standard practice for countries to overestimate enemy losses and underestimate their own during wars.
They try and keep [the numbers] low. They knock down a building that’s two blocks long, and they say one person was mildly injured. No, no, a lot of people were killed… millions of people,” Trump said.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has put the number of civilian deaths, or non-armed individuals, in Ukraine from the start of the conflict in February 2022 to July 31, 2024 at 11,520. The agency noted that the real numbers could be higher. Anonymous US officials told the New York Times last month that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed throughout the conflict is 70,000.
In the podcast, Trump said the conflict with Russia is “a war that shouldn’t have happened.” He accused the administration of US President Joe Biden of failing to prevent it and said the situation is now so out of hand that a peace agreement “is a much tougher deal to make than it would’ve been before it started.”
