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

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

IMAGE SOURCE,DARREN CONWAY/BBC

Image caption,

Flags fly above soldiers' graves in a cemetery in Lviv

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.

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On Margo's inside right arm is a small tattoo of a mother and child, with the birthdate of her son recorded. Her manicured nails are painted in Ukrainian colours. She wears a black T-shirt with the words "I'M UKRAINIAN" on the front.

"The hardest is when you see a dead young guy who hasn't even reached 20, 22 years old. And realising they didn't die their own death," she says. "They were killed. They were killed for their own land. That's the most painful. You cannot get used to this. It's now getting to the point where it's just about [helping] the boys reach home."

The most difficult day of her life, she says, was when her common-law husband was brought into the mortuary on the day he died. Twenty-three-year-old Andrii was killed in battle on 29 December 2022.

"He died while defending his motherland," she says. "But then, for the umpteenth time, I've convinced myself that I should be here, I should be helping the fallen."

FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66581217