‘Dying by the dozens every day’ - Ukraine losses climb

 

There has been a dramatic rise in Ukraine's number of dead, according to new estimates by unnamed US officials. The BBC's Quentin Sommerville has been on the front line in the east, where the grim task of counting the dead has become a daily reality.

The unknown soldiers lie piled high in a small brick mortuary, not very far from the front line in Donetsk, where 26-year-old Margo says she speaks to the dead.

"It may sound weird… but I'm the one who wants to apologise for their deaths. I want to thank them somehow. It's as if they can hear, but they can't respond."

At her cluttered desk outside the mortuary's heavy door, she sits, pen in hand. It is her job to record the particulars of the fallen.

Ukraine gives no official toll of its war dead - the Ukrainian armed forces have reiterated that their war casualty numbers are a state secret - but Margo knows the losses are huge.

The figures remain classified. But US officials, quoted by the New York Times, recently put the number at 70,000 dead and as many as 120,000 injured. It is a staggering figure, from an armed forces estimated at only half a million strong. The UN has recorded 9,177 civilian deaths to date.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66581217