European Commission Backtracks After Putting Ukraine’s War Dead at ‘More Than 100,000’

European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on March 8, 2018. (Yves Herman/Reuters)

The European Commission (EC) appears to have backtracked on claims that the Ukrainian military has sustained upward of 100,000 deaths since the conflict with Russia began more than nine months ago.

The 27-member commission is the executive body of the European Union, a staunch supporter of the Ukrainian war effort.

In a statement issued on Nov. 30, EC President Ursula von der Leyen put the number of Ukrainian military personnel killed since the conflict began at more than 100,000.

She also claimed that more than 20,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed as a result of the conflict.

“It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and more than 100,000 Ukrainian military officers have been killed so far,” she said.

Von der Leyen made the assertion in a video statement posted on the EC’s social media accounts.

Throughout the conflict, Kyiv and its Western allies have generally remained tight-lipped regarding the number of Ukrainian military casualties.

Hours after Von der Leyen’s video statement was posted, her claims were assiduously scrubbed from the official record.

The video posted on social media was quickly re-edited—roughly 10 seconds of footage was deleted—to remove any mention of casualty figures.

The same sentence was also removed from the EC’s official transcript of Von der Leyen’s statement.

Later the same day, an EC spokeswoman scrambled to clarify the apparent act of self-censorship.

“Many thanks to those who pointed out the inaccuracy regarding the figures in a previous version of this video,” spokeswoman Dana Spinant wrote on Twitter.

“The estimation used, from external sources, should have referred to casualties, i.e., both killed and injured, and was meant to show Russia’s brutality.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gives a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine after talks with the president of the European Council and NATO's secretary general at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Feb. 24, 2022. (John Thys/AFP via Getty Images)

Conflicting Narratives

The incident served to highlight the difficulties associated with determining the number of personnel—on both sides—that have been killed in the conflict.

Last month, U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the number of Russian troops killed and injured at more than 100,000 since the conflict began.

He went on to assert that Ukrainian forces had “probably” suffered a similar number of casualties.

However, Milley didn’t provide any basis for his assertions.

On Nov. 30, Vladimir Rogov, a pro-Moscow official in the Russia-held Zaporizhzhia region, put total Ukrainian military casualties at twice the number claimed by Von der Leyen.

The EC president’s estimate, he said, “could have been relevant a few months ago, but so far the losses sustained by [Ukraine] are much greater than the figure mentioned by von der Leyen.”

“According to information at my disposal, irretrievable losses of Ukrainian militants and national battalions have topped 200,000,” Rogov told Russia’s TASS news agency.

In late September, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that roughly 61,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed since the conflict began.

He went on to assert that approximately 6,000 Russian troops had been killed in battle over the same period.

The Epoch Times was unable to verify the claims.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu chairs a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Armed Forces in Moscow on July 5, 2022. (Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters)

Donetsk ‘Killing Ground’

In recent days, Russia has claimed to have made significant territorial gains in and around the town of Bakhmut (Artyomovsk in Russian) in the eastern Donetsk region.

Located roughly 55 miles north of Donetsk city, Bakhmut and its surroundings have remained the scene of fierce ground fighting for the past several months.

On Nov. 30, pro-Moscow officials claimed that Donetsk’s town of Kurdyumivka had fallen to Russian forces, giving the latter “full control” of a strategic highway linking Bakhmut to the town of Horlivka.

On the same day, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that the nearby Bilohorivka and Pershe Travnya settlements had both also been taken.

In its daily briefing for Dec. 1, the ministry claimed that another settlement in the area had likewise been “liberated” by advancing Russian troops.

While The Epoch Times couldn’t verify the assertions, sources cited by the Western media acknowledged that Ukrainian forces deployed in Donetsk appear to be facing severe rates of attrition.

In a Nov. 29 interview with CNN, retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark described the front lines in Donetsk as a “killing ground.”

If Russian forces capture Bakhmut, he said that “it opens the door towards [the nearby towns of] Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, but it also serves as a sort of killing ground for grinding up the Ukrainian forces.”

Clark noted that Ukrainian forces were “taking heavy losses” in Bakhmut.

In a Nov. 29 article in The American Conservative magazine, retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor challenged the Western media’s optimistic portrayal of the conflict.

Macgregor, who served as an adviser to the secretary of defense during the Trump administration, said that “months of heavy Ukrainian casualties” caused by “pointless attacks” on Russian positions had “dangerously” degraded Kyiv’s combat capabilities.

“Contrary to the Western media’s popular ‘Ukrainian victory’ narrative, which blocks any information that contradicts it, Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war,” he said.