ISW: in 2024, Russia put 420 thousand of its soldiers for 4 small cities
1 January 09:00
In 2024, Russian troops seized 4168 square kilometers of Ukraine’s territory, mostly fields and small settlements, losing more than 420,000 troops. This is stated in a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), reports Komersant ukrainskyi.
According to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, in 2024 alone, Russian forces suffered losses of 427 thousand personnel. According to the ISW analysis, this means that Russia lost approximately 102 soldiers for every square kilometer of captured Ukrainian territory.
Between September and November 2024, Russian troops gained 56.5% of their territories in 2024. In December 2024, Russia’s offensive slowed down significantly, while the number of daily casualties remained at the level of November. Ukraine’s General Staff reported average daily enemy losses in December at 1,585, the fourth historical high. In the last week of December, according to Syrsky, these figures rose to 1700 people per day.
In 2024, the Russian military command focused its efforts on capturing the rest of Donetsk region and creating a buffer zone in the north of Kharkiv region, but failed to achieve these goals. At the beginning of the year, the occupiers managed to capture Avdiivka in mid-February, after which they advanced westward toward Pokrovsk and Selidove during the spring, summer, and fall of 2024.
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In the second half of the year, Russian troops took advantage of the capture of Selidove and Vuhledar to continue their offensive toward Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and later Velyka Novosilka. Recently, the occupiers captured Kurakhove and are trying to surround Velyka Novosilka from the north and south. At the same time, the enemy actively used platoon, company and battalion-level mechanized assaults to advance across open terrain, which led to significant losses of armored vehicles.
Throughout 2024, Russian troops managed to capture only four medium-sized settlements – Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar, and Kurakhove, the largest of which had a pre-war population of just over 31,000. The pace of the occupiers’ advance slowed significantly around urban areas. According to the ISW, none of the captured settlements is of operational importance, as their capture prevented the Russians from threatening important nodes of Ukrainian defense.
Ukrainian forces have not yet been able to completely stop Russian advances in priority areas, and Western assistance remains critical to stabilizing the front in 2025. Although Ukrainian defenders have managed to largely contain the Russian offensive near Chasovyi Yar and Toretsk, the occupiers continue to gradually advance toward Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Velyka Novosilka.
Vladimir Putin officially declared 2025 the “Year of the Defender of the Fatherland” during his New Year’s address on December 31, indicating further efforts by the Kremlin to militarize Russian society and maintain regime stability by meeting the needs of the growing community of Russian veterans. Putin has approved a series of instructions for the Russian government aimed at expanding the network of military-patriotic education programs and continues to expand veterans’ support programs, likely due to concerns that the growing number of disaffected Russian veterans could threaten the stability of his regime.
