After the Russian invasion, up to 13 thousand Ukrainian soldiers were killed

An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday that a maximum of 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia attacked his country since February. Mykhailo Podoliak, one of Mr. Zelenskiy’s advisers, told Ukraine’s Channel 24: “We have official estimates from the headquarters (…) Their number ranges from 10,000 (…) to 13,000.” According to him, the head of state will announce the official information “when the time comes”.

In June, as Russian forces battled to completely seize the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Mr Zelensky said his country was “losing 60 to 100 soldiers every day, killed in the fighting and around 500 wounded”.

In the opposition camp, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in September that 5,937 Russian soldiers had died since the conflict began on February 24. The two are suspected of minimizing casualties so as not to affect the morale of their enemy soldiers.

US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley estimated in November that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded since the invasion, and losses were likely to be similar on the Ukrainian side. These figures, which could not be independently verified, are the most accurate figures the US government has provided to date. Several thousand civilians died in the most violent armed conflict in Europe in decades.

The war in Ukraine shows that Europe is “not strong enough”, Finland’s prime minister said

Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Friday gave a “very honest” assessment of Europe’s capabilities in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, making it clear that it is “not strong enough to stand alone against Moscow”.

During his visit to Australia, the leader of the candidate country for NATO membership emphasized that Russia’s aggression and occupation of neighboring Ukraine revealed Europe’s weaknesses and strategic mistakes in front of Moscow. “I have to be very honest with you (…), right now Europe is not strong enough, without the United States we would be in trouble,” he pointed to the Sydney-based Lowe Institute.

Ms Marin insisted that Ukraine should be “helped by any means possible”, adding that the US had played a central role in providing Kiev with the weapons, funding and humanitarian aid it needed to halt Russia’s advance. “We have to make sure that we also build these capabilities in terms of European defense, European defense industry, and we can deal with different situations,” he said. Finland gained independence from Russia some 105 years ago and, although largely unarmed, soon suffered heavy losses to the invading Soviet army.

The head of the Finnish government criticizes the policy of the EU

The head of the Finnish government criticized the European Union’s policy of emphasizing the importance of relations with Vladimir Putin and said that the bloc should have listened to the member states of the Soviet Union before its collapse.

Since joining the European Union in 2004, states such as Estonia and Poland have urged other EU members to take a tougher stance against Mr Putin.

“For a long time, Europe has been building a strategy to strengthen our economic relations with Russia, to buy energy from Russia… we thought that this would prevent a war, but this approach turned out to be so.” it is completely wrong,” Ms. Marin criticized. They do not care about economic relations, they do not care about sanctions.

Macron and Biden want to find a way out together in Ukraine

Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron expressed their desire to find a solution together in Ukraine during a state visit full of diplomatic love in Washington on Thursday, but without cutting their support for Kiev. “If Putin is looking for a way to end the war, I’m ready to talk to him. He hasn’t done it yet,” the American president said during a joint press conference with his French counterpart in the middle of the day.

He also stressed that any discussion with the Russian president will be conducted “in consultation with my French and NATO friends.” The 80-year-old Democrat said as the conflict entered its tenth month and during a particularly harsh winter, “(we) will maintain our unity to counter Russian brutality in Ukraine.”

The French president, whose positions on the issue have caused misunderstanding and even some irritation among the Americans in the past, told him that he would never push the Ukrainians to accept an unacceptable compromise regarding Russian aggression. , because it would not make it possible to build “lasting peace”. In a joint statement, the two countries assured that they will “continue to provide political, security, humanitarian and economic assistance to Kyiv as long as necessary.”