Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk stated, that, according to information received from Ukrainian partners, Ukraine has recently been losing about 27 thousand military personnel killed and wounded every month.
The statement was made September 17 from the rostrum of the Polish Sejm. It is important that Tusk did not refer to Russian data or analysts’ estimates, but rather to information that, according to him, he received from the Ukrainian side.
— Tusk called about 27,000 killed and wounded per month;
– this is not 27 thousand dead, but total losses;
— Zelensky in February 2026 spoke approximately 55 thousand dead Ukrainian military since the beginning of the war;
— Western CSIS in the summer of 2026 estimated Ukrainian losses to be much higher: 125–150 thousand dead and 525–625 thousand total losses;
— Russia publishes even higher figures and claims that Ukrainian losses have long exceeded a million people;
— at the same time, Kyiv recognizes the need to mobilize at least 30 thousand people monthly.
What exactly did Tusk say?
An official Polish source confirms that the prime minister spoke about a new level of Ukrainian losses amid changes in Russian tactics and the increased use of jet drones.
“Our Ukrainian partners told me that recently every month this is about 27 thousand killed and wounded“said Tusk, calling this figure a record “in the saddest sense of the word.”
The Polish prime minister warned that if such dynamics continue, the coming winter could become extremely difficult for Ukraine.
?? Ukrainian army is losing 27,000 troops a month — Polish PM Donald Tusk
This information was never made public before, and it’s still probably on the low end
Back in late July, Zelensky claimed Ukraine had lost just 50,000 soldiers since 2022 pic.twitter.com/3BN2PQNxPR
— The Other Side Media (@TheOtherSideRu) September 18, 2026
Source: Polskie Radio.
What Zelensky says
The last specific public figure we found for Vladimir Zelensky dates back to February 2026. In an interview with French television, he stated that since the beginning of a full-scale war, about 55 thousand Ukrainian military personnel. At the same time, he separately noted the large number of missing people.
This is already higher than the previous official estimate of Kyiv. In February 2025, Zelensky spoke about 46 thousand dead, and in December 2024 – about 43 thousand. Athens News then analyzed this data in detail in the material “Zelensky named the number of dead Ukrainians”.
However, the figures published by Kiev cover mainly the dead and do not allow direct comparison with Tusk’s figure, which includes both killed and wounded.
Western estimates are significantly higher
The assessments of Western analysts differ markedly from the official statements of Kyiv.
American Center for Strategic and International Studies – CSIS in July 2026 estimated the total Ukrainian military losses from February 2022 to June 2026 at approximately 525–625 thousand peopleincluding killed, wounded and missing.
CSIS estimated the number of dead Ukrainian military personnel in the range 125–150 thousand people.
These estimates are two to three times higher than Zelensky’s publicly stated death toll.
At the same time, CSIS itself emphasizes that the calculation of military losses during a war is inevitably approximate, and all sides have political incentives to downplay their own losses and overstate the losses of the enemy.
What Russia claims
The Russian side publishes significantly higher estimates of Ukrainian losses.
According to TASS calculations based on daily reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense, by February 2026, the total losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine allegedly exceeded 1.5 million people killed and wounded. Only from the beginning of 2026 to that time, Moscow announced approximately 65 thousand Ukrainian losses.
In July, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced approximately 60,630 Ukrainian Armed Forces losses in one monththat is, approximately 2 thousand people per day.
These figures have not been independently verified and are significantly higher than both Ukrainian and most Western estimates. Therefore, they should be considered precisely as the official position of the Russian side, and not as established statistics.
Mobilization: where do 30 thousand people a month go?
This is where Tusk’s statement becomes especially interesting.
On August 28, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, publicly stated that the country should mobilize at least 30 thousand people every month. According to him, this is the minimum required amount to maintain the current size of the army.
The Ukrainian press and social networks have long been asking a simple question: if about 30 thousand new people enter the system every month, why does the army continue to experience an acute shortage of personnel?
The answer is not limited to losses at the front. A mobilized person does not necessarily immediately become a front-line infantryman.
Some recruits undergo training and are away from the front for months. Some turn out to be of limited suitability or are subsequently declared unfit for health reasons. A significant share is sent to headquarters, technical, transport, medical, communications and other rear units. There is unauthorized abandonment of units, desertion, dismissals for medical reasons, transfers, losses due to illness and accidents.
Earlier, The Kyiv Independent, citing a high-ranking Ukrainian official, wrote that of the approximately 30 thousand mobilized monthly, only about a third could be directly suitable for combat service. These are not official statistics from the General Staff, but they show well why the mobilization figure and the actual replenishment of the infantry are far from the same thing.
The Athens News previously discussed the problem of mobilization, in particular, in the materials about conflict episodes around the TCC And about the personnel shortage and the pace of mobilization.
Why are the numbers so different?
In war there is no single method of counting. Even the term “loss” can mean different things.
One statistics takes into account only the dead, another – the killed and wounded, and the third – also the missing. In addition, one soldier can be injured several times and be included in the medical statistics several times.
A separate problem is missing and military personnel, whose fate has not been documented for a long time.
Therefore, the figures from Tusk, Zelensky, Russia and CSIS cannot simply be added into one table as completely comparable indicators.
| Source | Grade | What counts? |
| Donald Tusk, September 2026 | 27 thousand per month | killed + wounded |
| Vladimir Zelensky, February 2026 | about 55 thousand | deaths since 2022 |
| CSIS, July 2026 | 525–625 thousand | killed + wounded + missing |
| CSIS | 125–150 thousand | dead |
| Russia | more than 1.5 million | declared killed + wounded |
What can be said for sure
Neither side publishes fully verifiable and detailed statistics on its own losses.
But Tusk’s statement is significant because it comes from the head of the government of Poland, a state that remains one of Ukraine’s key allies, and directly refers to a Ukrainian source of information.
If the figure of 27,000 dead and wounded truly reflects the current situation, it is almost identical to the minimum number of people that the Ukrainian leadership considers necessary to mobilize each month.
This does not mean that all those mobilized “disappear” due to combat losses. But this order of numbers explains well why even the constant mobilization of tens of thousands of people does not lead to a noticeable surplus of personnel at the front.
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