- Russian daily losses hit another record high in December, the UK MOD said.
- The ministry said this marks the fifth straight month that Moscow’s daily losses have climbed to new highs.
- Russia’s worst day for losses was on December 19, when 2,200 of its troops were killed or wounded, per the MOD.
December marked the fifth month in a row that Russian losses in Ukraine broke records for average daily highs, the UK’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
“The average daily Russian casualties reached a new monthly war high during December 2024,” the ministry wrote in an intelligence update. “The daily average loss rate was 1,570, the fifth straight month that Russian Forces have sustained new war high average daily losses.”
It said Russia suffered its highest daily loss in the war on December 19, saying that 2,200 of its troops were injured or killed that day.
Citing figures reported by Ukraine, the ministry said December was “likely the most costly month of the war for Russia,” with a total of 48,670 dead or wounded.
The ministry added that December was the sixth straight month that Russia suffered an increase in its monthly losses.
It did not say if these numbers included losses taken by North Korean troops, of whom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview on Sunday that 3,800 were killed or wounded.
The British ministry has regularly said over the last year that Russia has increasingly been suffering from high losses due to its reliance on mass infantry assaults aimed at wearing down Ukraine’s defenses.
Ukrainian brigades, which say they are sometimes outnumbered one to five and often underequipped, have slowly yielded about 1,600 square miles of territory in 2024.
But the grinding assault has come at a high cost for Russia, with the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War estimating that Moscow lost about 40 troops for each square mile it seized.
The UK Defense Ministry added in its Tuesday update that Russian monthly losses would likely continue to worsen as the Kremlin fights on multiple fronts, often sending infantry on foot to exhaust Ukrainian defenses.
The strategy, while producing limited results, has heightened perceptions that the war hinges more than ever on either Ukraine or Russia’s ability to sustain their resources on the battlefield.
Questions now hang over American aid to Kyiv, with President-elect Donald Trump, who repeatedly said he wants a swift resolution to the war, set to take office on January 20.
But a chief worry for both sides is also manpower. Ukraine has been struggling to replenish its ranks as the war drags on, pivoting in 2024 to a now much-criticized system of creating fresh brigades instead of reinforcing existing ones.
Meanwhile, Russia has been sticking to mass recruitment by offering large bonuses to new soldiers. In December, it announced that it was pouring $126 billion, or about 32.5% of its federal budget for 2025, into defense spending.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
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