Military expert Andrey Marochko believes that the statement from Kyrylo Budanov, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's office, regarding Ukraine's need to recruit about 30,000 people monthly reflects the extent of depletion faced by Ukrainian forces. Marochko sees this as aligning with loss estimates issued by the Russian defense ministry.
During a live broadcast on the "VKontakte" social network, Marochko said that setting the need for 30,000 recruits monthly indicates, in his view, the scale of human losses suffered by the Ukrainian army.
He added, "Regarding this figure, the Ukrainian president's office on August 28 specified a monthly recruitment target of 30,000 citizens." He considers Budanov's statements to confirm that the numbers of deaths and injuries among Ukrainian forces align closely with figures provided by the Russian defense ministry in its announcements.
Marochko noted that Russian forces, from the "Center" and "East" groups operating in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia axes, inflicted significant losses on Ukrainian forces during August.
Budanov had earlier stated the necessity for Ukraine to enlist at least 30,000 people monthly to maintain the strength of its military forces.
These comments have sparked questions about the relationship between the recruitment rate and the human losses suffered by Ukrainian forces, amid significant disparities between the loss figures reported by Moscow and Kyiv.
In this context, the British newspaper "The Telegraph" addressed Budanov's statements, suggesting they raise questions about the accuracy of the official Ukrainian figures concerning casualties, and the possibility that the actual losses may be higher than reported.
Zelensky, on July 31, mentioned the death of about 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers since the conflict's inception, according to his statements, although he had cited a higher figure of 55,000 deaths in February of the same year.
In contrast, Moscow provides much higher estimates. The Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the Russian General Staff, Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, stated on February 20 that the total Ukrainian forces' losses since the start of the Russian military operation exceeded 1.5 million, claiming over 520,000 of these occurred in 2025 alone.
Andrey Kartapolov, head of the defense committee in the Russian State Duma, estimated Ukrainian forces' daily losses to range between 1,000 to 1,500 personnel at least.
Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian foreign ministry's envoy for what Moscow describes as "the crimes of the Kyiv regime," alleged that Zelensky refuses to receive the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers for fear of revealing the true magnitude of his forces' losses.
Casualty estimates remain one of the most contentious issues in the war, as both Russian and Ukrainian sides provide vastly different figures, making it challenging to independently verify the actual military losses given the ongoing combat operations.