‘Highest price for war’: Russia lost 430,000 soldiers in 2024, says Ukraine

Casualties understood to have reached record levels last year as Russia seized less than 1 percent of Ukrainian lands.

Russia’s gradual, grinding advance in parts of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk succeeded in wresting away 4,168 sq km (1,609 square miles) of fields and abandoned villages in 2024 – equivalent to 0.69 percent of the country.

That was the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, based on satellite imagery and geolocated video footage.

“Russian forces have seized four mid-sized settlements – Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar, and Kurakhove – in all of 2024, the largest of which had a pre-war population of just over 31,000 people,” said the ISW.

Russian forces spent four months taking Avdiivka, and two months each for Selydove and Kurakhove.

“Seizing these settlements has not allowed Russian forces to threaten any notable Ukrainian defensive nodes,” said the ISW, adding that Moscow’s troops failed to conduct the kind of rapid, mechanised manoeuvre necessary to convert these “tactical gains into deep penetrations of Ukraine’s rear”.