Inside the vast military cemetery that lays bare the 100,000 Ukrainian troops lost since Putin’s invasion
Inside the vast military cemetery that lays bare the 100,000 Ukrainian troops lost since Putin’s invasion
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GRIEVING families prayed for peace yesterday as a vast military cemetery laid bare Ukraine’s war losses. The embattled nation is now estimated to have lost about 100,000 troops — more than the capacity of Wembley Stadium — in the 35 months since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
![[Man mourns at a military cemetery in Kharkiv, Ukraine, among numerous graves marked with Ukrainian flags.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/military-cemetery-kharkiv-grown-massively-966799227.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Russia has lost up to double that number as its ruthless president pours more men into assaults along Eastern Ukraine’s blood-soaked front line. But the tyrant has calculated he will eventually win the war as he has more men to toss into the meat grinder than his enemy.
![[Kharkiv military cemetery with numerous graves, many adorned with Ukrainian flags.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/military-cemetery-kharkiv-grown-massively-966799301.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
And Ukraine’s toll has now become impossible to hide at military cemeteries across the war-weary nation. At Kharkiv Cemetery Number 18 yesterday, grieving loved ones braved bone-chilling cold to silently pay their respects. Flags marked out a yellow and blue sea of sacrifice alongside endless rows of grey stone tombstones etched with the smiling faces of the fallen.
![[Aerial view of a cemetery with numerous Ukrainian flags placed at the gravesites.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/aerial-view-ukrainian-flags-wave-966791043.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Previously, a few dozen soldiers who died in Russia’s first Donbas incursion in 2014 made up a corner of the graveyard. But after the February 2022 invasion, their ranks expanded as far as the eye can see to 6,000 in just one cemetery. Dmytro Neznamov and his elderly mother lit a candle at the war grave of his cousin Andrey Levtesov yesterday.
![[Kharkiv military cemetery with numerous graves, many marked with Ukrainian flags and photos of the deceased.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/military-cemetery-kharkiv-grown-massively-966799202.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
He told The Sun: “He was an artillery gunner killed by a Russian drone when he tried to save the crew of a tank. “He was a builder before the war but joined up to defend his country when the Russians invaded and was 46 when he died in June last year.
![[Headstone with a photo of Mykola Anatoliyovych PIVEN, 1973-2022, in a Kharkiv military cemetery.]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/military-cemetery-kharkiv-grown-massively-966799208.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
