Ukraine war briefing: Our war dead 43,000 and Russia’s 198,000 says Zelenskyy

Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggests foreign troops to protect Ukraine until it can join Nato; Ukraine’s president woos potential next German chancellor. What we know on day 1,021

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war, while of 370,000 injured, about half had been able to return to service after treatment. The Ukrainian president said 198,000 Russian soldiers had been killed and a further 550,000 injured. Almost 800,000 Russian troops are deployed in Ukraine, he said. The figures were not independently verified.

Zelenskyy on Monday made the case for a diplomatic settlement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and raised the idea of foreign troops being deployed in his country until it could join the Nato military alliance. It came after Donald Trump said Kyiv was ready to make a deal with Moscow to stop the war and that Vladimir Putin should make efforts toward negotiating a truce. The Ukrainian president told reporters he was hoping to call the outgoing US president, Joe Biden, in the coming days to discuss Nato membership.

“A troop contingent from one country or another could be present in Ukraine for as long as it isn’t part of Nato. But for that we need to have a clear understanding of when Ukraine becomes an EU member and when a Nato member,” Zelenskyy said. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, caused controversy in Europe in February when he raised the possibility of European nations sending troops to Ukraine. “Even if we get invited [to Nato], what happens then? Who guarantees our security? We can think about that and work on Emmanuel Macron’s proposal,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy asked for more support from Berlin against Russia while meeting with the current German opposition CDU party leader, Friedrich Merz, who is leading opinion polls ahead of elections in February. “We are counting on stronger, more decisive actions from Germany, from you personally. We are counting on it very much,” Zelenskyy said, mentioning Ukraine’s request for an invitation to join Nato and for long-range missiles. Merz has urged the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to send Ukraine the long-range Taurus missile system, which could fire deep into Russian territory – something Scholz has refused to do.

The Estonian prime minister, Kristen Michal, was also in Kyiv on Monday to meet with Zelenskyy and other senior officials, including Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal.

Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks killed a 91-year-old woman in the village of Stara Mykolayivka in the Donetsk region on Monday, as shelling also wounded four others. A man was killed in the southern Kherson region, said the local governor, Oleksandr Prokudin.

Ukraine will soon get another €4.2bn after the EU’s member states approved the planned payment, the EU council announced. The money is intended to help Ukraine’s struggling economy.

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