More than 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers have gone missing under mysterious circumstances, Ukraine’s Commissioner for Missing Persons, Oleh Kotenko, said on national television on April 18.
“Unfortunately, this number is a reality and may be over 7,000. We are looking to find in captivity the people we are looking for as missing people,” he said.
Statistically, about 60-65% of missing people are actually captives, while the others could be dead, he added.
Exchanges of prisoners of war between Russia and Ukraine cover both those whose captivity has been confirmed and those who are missing, the coordination headquarters said.
Ukrainian war casualties, however, remain much lower than Russian losses, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in an interview with Spanish TV show La Razon.
He added that Ukraine’s losses were lower than the death toll from the earthquake in Turkey and Syria this year that killed more than 50,000 people – a comment he was forced to apologize for.
