Families and friends of missing Ukrainian service members called for the return of loved ones in March in Kyiv.Credit…Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Two years into the war in Ukraine, families, lawyers and rights groups say that the Ukrainian military is simply overloaded with casualties and unable to account for thousands of the dead.
Some of the missing soldiers have been captured by Russian troops, but others may be dead and unidentified, lying in morgues as the government works through the backlog. Trench fighting often leaves bodies abandoned in great numbers in buffer areas, making it harder to get a clear picture of the war’s toll.
By the numbers: In February, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, put the number of soldiers killed at 31,000, and Kyiv has said that about half again as many are missing. (U.S. estimates are far higher, suggesting that by last August, 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died.)
