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About 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russian invasion began, Volodymyr Zelensky said in a rare acknowledgment of the scale of the country’s casualties.

In a post on social media, the Ukrainian president said 370,000 others had been injured, although this figure also included soldiers who had been injured more than once.

He also claimed that 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and another 550,000 wounded.

The BBC has been unable to verify these claims.

Both Russia and Ukraine have often refrained from publishing casualty figures and are thought to underestimate the true costs of the conflict.

A recent report from Reuters news agency, citing an unnamed US intelligence source, said the war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and wounded troops – almost 90% of the number the country first deployed when the conflict began.

Meanwhile, an August New York Times report citing US officials puts the number of war dead in Ukraine at 70,000, with as many as 120,000 injured.

The last time Zelensky gave an update on the number of victims in Ukraine before Sunday was in February, when he estimated the number of Ukrainian deaths at 31,000.

It is believed that the Ukrainian president was forced to make his final confession after new US President Donald Trump posted on social media that 600,000 Russians had been killed or injured, while the figure for Ukraine was 400,000. Trump has not indicated where these numbers come from.

Although estimates of the number of war dead and wounded vary, the consensus is that there are Russian casualties are much higher than those of Ukraine due to their ‘meat grinder’ tactics.

Recent developments in the war have only increased the number of deaths.

Russian forces continue to advance incrementally along the eastern frontline, having captured and recaptured about 2,350 square kilometers of territory in eastern Ukraine and Russia’s western Kursk region since the beginning of the year.

Ukrainian forces maintain control of a small part of Russian territory after launching a surprise offensive against Russia in August.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense says Russia suffered 45,680 casualties in November – more than in any month since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

According to the latest estimates from British Defense Intelligence, Russia is losing an average of 1,523 deaths and injuries per day.

On November 28, it says, Russia lost more than 2,000 men in a single day, the first time this had happened.

These figures were based on open source material, sometimes cross-referenced with classified data, officials said.

Ukraine does not allow its own military casualties to be published, so there are no official estimates for recent months.

The Russian Defense Ministry says more than 38,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded in Kursk alone – a number that cannot be verified.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has occupied territory in the south and east of the country.

Zelensky mentioned Ukraine’s war victims in a broader post about the prospects for an eventual end to the war.

It is a follow-up to the talks that took place in Paris on Saturday with French President Emmanuel Macron and Trump. The newly elected US president has said on numerous occasions that he wants a quick end to the war, tapping into the sentiment of about a quarter of Americans that the US is providing too much support to Ukraine.

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in one day,” but has not yet specified how he plans to do that.

In his post, Zelensky emphasized that any peace deal must be backed by effective international guarantees for his country’s security.

He said he had told Macron and Trump that Kiev needs a “lasting peace” that Moscow will not “destroy in a few years.”