Russian forces have taken control of 4,168 square kilometers in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, mostly fields and small settlements. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky said on December 30 that Russian forces suffered 427,000 casualties in 2024.
This is according to the latest analysis of the fighting in Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The ISW has reviewed evidence to support its claim that Russian forces advanced 4,168 square kilometers in 2024, which indicates that Russian forces suffered approximately 102 casualties per square kilometer of captured Ukrainian territory. ISW previously noted that Russian forces gained 2,356 square kilometers in exchange for approximately 125,800 casualties during a period of intensified Russian offensive operations in September, October, and November 2024.
Russian forces achieved 56.5 percent of their territorial victories in 2024 during the period September - November 2024. Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on December 24 that 440,000 recruits had signed military service contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) in 2024, suggesting that Russia is likely recruiting enough military personnel to replace its casualties.
However, Russian progress slowed in December 2024.
Syrsky said on December 30 that Russian forces had suffered 1,700 casualties per day in the past week (as of December 23), indicating that Russian forces may have suffered even more losses in the last few weeks of 2024, even though Russian progress has slowed.
The Russian military command has largely prioritized efforts to capture the rest of Donetsk Oblast and create a buffer zone in the northern Kharkiv Oblast in 2024, but failed to achieve these goals. Intensified Russian offensive operations in early 2024 led to the capture of Avdiivka in mid-February 2024 and subsequent Russian offensives in the directions of Pokrovsk and Selidovo in the spring, summer, and fall of 2024.
Russian forces also resumed offensive operations near Toretsk and to the west and southwest of Donetsk city in June and July 2024.
Western and Ukrainian sources estimated in 2023 and 2024 that Russia intended to capture all of Donetsk and Luhansk by the end of 2024, but Russia's slow progress in early and mid-2024 likely caused the Russian military command to reassess and identify the capture of Pokrovsk as the main offensive effort of Russian forces for the remainder of 2024.
Thus, Russian forces returned to the Pokrovsk direction in late summer and early fall of 2024 amid a surprise Ukrainian invasion of Kursk Oblast and successfully used the capture of Selidovo and Ugledar to make further advances around Pokrovsk, Kurakhovo, and later Velika Novosilka. Russian forces recently captured Kurakhovo and are attempting to encircle Velika Novosilka from the north and south.
Russian forces may also, at least temporarily, shift their focus from encircling Pokrovsk to making an opportunistic advance due west toward the Donetsk-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border at a critical juncture in Russia's ongoing efforts to undermine Western support for Ukraine.
Russian forces have captured four medium-sized settlements throughout 2024 - Avdiivka, Selidovo, Ugledar, and Kurakhovo. The largest of these has a pre-war population of just over 31,000. The pace of Russian advance has largely stalled around several more urban settlements that Russian forces attempted to capture in 2024. Russian forces spent approximately four months capturing Avdiivka in late 2023. and early 2024 and two months each in efforts to capture and surround Selidovo and Kurakhovo in 2024.
Russian forces also suffered significant personnel losses during attempts to capture these settlements, and Ukrainian officials recently estimated that Russian forces lost nearly 3,000 personnel in the Pokrovsk direction in two weeks in mid-December 2024.
However, Ukrainian forces have not yet stopped Russian forces from advancing in their priority sectors, and Western assistance remains critical to Ukraine's ability to stabilize the front line in 2025. Ukrainian defenders have largely stopped Russian advances near Chasov Yar and Toretsk, but Russian forces continue to make gradual advances in the Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Velika Novosilka directions. Continuing Ukrainian manpower constraints and morale issues also create vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defenses, and Ukrainian officials must address these issues and provide steely defenders against Russian infantry attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russian forces and Russian President Vladimir Putin currently operate under a theory of victory that assumes that Russian forces can advance into Ukraine indefinitely, but does not account for the possibility that Ukrainian forces could inflict losses sufficient to halt or stop future Russian offensive operations.
Ukrainian forces, with the support of Ukraine’s Western allies, must therefore work to integrate Ukrainian drone operations, sufficiently resourced artillery and long-range strike capabilities, and committed Ukrainian infantry units to defend against Russian advances and undermine Putin’s theory of victory by 2025.
Russian President Vladimir Putin officially declared 2025 the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland" during his New Year's address on December 31 - signaling the Kremlin's continued efforts to militarize Russian society and maintain regime stability by appeasing Russia's growing community of veterans.
Putin said the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland" would honor current Russian servicemen, the 80th anniversary of World War II, and other veterans who fought for Russia. On December 20, Putin approved a list of instructions for the Russian government aimed at expanding Russia's network of military-patriotic educational programs as part of his "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland" policy.
Putin is also likely to continue expanding and institutionalizing additional veteran support programs as part of the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland", many of which the Kremlin launched in 2023 and 2024, likely out of concerns that the ever-growing number of disaffected Russian veterans could threaten the stability of the regime. In particular, he created and significantly expanded the functions of the State Fund of Russian Defenders of the Fatherland in 2023 and 2024, which promises to support Russian veterans who fought in Ukraine.
Putin also presented the state initiative "Time of Heroes" in the spring of 2024, which aims to appoint Kremlin-selected Russian veterans to positions of power in the Russian government and business sector. Russian authorities have already appointed two participants to two major Russian military-patriotic institutions.
Putin also passed numerous decrees offering subsidies and benefits for veterans in 2024 and is likely to continue to do so in 2025, to ensure that the veteran community does not harbor grievances against the Kremlin and its war effort in Ukraine. Despite the rising cost of living. The commitments increasingly commit Russia to long-term financial obligations.
Ukrainian naval drones have reportedly shot down a Russian Mi-8 helicopter near the occupied Cape Tarkhankut, Crimea. This is the first time a naval drone has shot down an aerial target. The Main Directorate of Military Intelligence (GUR) of Ukraine announced on December 31 that it had destroyed a Russian Mi-8 helicopter using R-73 "Sea Dragon" missiles fired from a Magura V5 naval attack drone in the Black Sea.
The GUR noted that Ukrainian naval drones had damaged another Russian Mi-8 helicopter, but the damaged helicopter eventually landed at an airfield. The GUR said that the naval drone's strike on Russian Mi-8 helicopters marked the first-ever destruction of an aerial target by a naval drone. The occupation governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said that Russian forces had repelled four Ukrainian air drones and two naval drones over and into the Black Sea on the night of December 31, but did not acknowledge the downing of the Mi-8 helicopter.
Russian bloggers have expressed concern that Russia's efforts to destroy Ukrainian naval drones will be complicated, as Russia relies on helicopters and Su-30SM fighter jets to target naval drones that are far from the Crimean coast.
Ukraine's Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces also destroyed a Russian Tor air defense system in southern Ukraine, and a local Crimean source claimed that Ukrainian forces may have hit a Tor air defense system near the occupied Kozacha Bay (southwest of Sevastopol).
Ukrainian forces hit the Yarsevskaya oil depot in Smolensk Oblast and a building used by the Russian military in Lgov, Kursk Oblast on December 30 and 31. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 31 that drone strikes had been launched against the Yarsevskaya oil depot, causing a series of intense explosions and a fire at the refinery.
The head of the Yartsevsky district, Roman Zakharov, confirmed the Ukrainian drone strike on social media, but later deleted the post and expanded on the claim by the governor of the Smolensk region, Vasily Anokhin, that debris from the downed Ukrainian drones had caused the fire at the oil refinery.
The Russian opposition publication Astra, citing unnamed sources, reported that Ukrainian forces fired at least six Storm Shadow missiles at a building used by Russian forces in Lgov on December 30.
The strike killed and wounded Russian servicemen and injured one civilian. The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, said that Ukrainian forces had struck an apartment building in Lgov.