‘A Lot Of Unnecessary DEATH!’: Trump Drops New Figures On Russian Battlefield Losses

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he had been informed nearly 20,000 Russian troops were killed in combat over the past month, raising the total number of Russian military deaths during the “ridiculous war” with Ukraine to 112,500.

Trump added that Ukraine has lost around 8,000 soldiers since January 1, a number that does not include soldiers who are missing. The president did not specify the source of the statistics or who provided him with the updated casualty figures.

“That is a lot of unnecessary DEATH!” Trump wrote.

“Ukraine has also lost civilians, but in smaller numbers, as Russian rockets crash into Kyiv, and other Ukrainian locales,” he added. “This is a War that should have never happened — This is Biden’s War, not ‘TRUMP’s.’ I’m just here to see if I can stop it!”

Precise casualty numbers in the Ukraine-Russia war have been difficult to estimate given both countries’ propaganda efforts to undercount the total number of deaths on their side. The most recent estimate said that Russia would see one million soldiers either dead or wounded by the summer of 2025, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The CSIS study put the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war at 250,000.

“To put these numbers into historical perspective, Russia has suffered roughly five times as many fatalities in Ukraine as in all Russian and Soviet wars combined between the end of World War II and the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022,” CSIS wrote in its June 3 report.

Trump has ramped up pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a peace deal with Ukraine and end the bloodshed. He has also blasted Putin for continued attacks on Ukraine while the countries negotiate. Peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv have continued for months with little progress, and Trump has become increasingly frustrated with Putin after Russian forces launched multiple major airstrikes on Ukraine in recent weeks.

Trump announced on Friday that he was dispatching two U.S. nuclear submarines “to be positioned in the appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.”

“Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Medvedev, who operates as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack dog, has mocked Trump’s ultimatums for Russia to end the war in Ukraine.