Russia seized 4,168 square kilometers at the expense of hundreds of thousands dead soldiers: ISW showed how the map of Ukraine war has changed over the year

In 2024, Russian troops seized 4,168 square kilometers which mostly consist of fields and small settlements in Ukraine and Russian Kursk region. This has cost it more than 420,000 casualties. Although the occupation command focused its efforts on capturing the rest of Donetsk region and creating a "buffer zone" in the north of Kharkiv region, it failed to achieve these goals.

This is stated in the report of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) as of December 31. Analysts showed the pace of Putin's army's advance over the year and assessed the aggressor's efforts on the map.

On December 30, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that Russian troops suffered 427,000 manpower losses in 2024. The ISW noted that it had assessed geolocation evidence showing that during this time the Russian Armed Forces had advanced by 4,168 square kilometers on the front.

According to experts, this indicates that Russian troops suffered approximately 102 losses per square kilometer of captured Ukrainian territory.

Earlier, ISW reported that the Russian invaders seized 2,356 square kilometers in exchange for an estimated 125,800 casualties during the intensification of their offensive operations in September, October and November 2024.

According to the new data, Putin's army made 56.5% of its territorial gains last year between September and November 2024.

"Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev claimed on December 24 that 440,000 recruits signed military service contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) in 2024, suggesting that Russia is likely recruiting just enough military personnel to replace its recently high casualty rates one for one," analysts say.

At the same time, they emphasized that in December 2024, Russian offensives slowed down. Geolocation evidence showed that Russian forces occupied 593 square kilometers, or 18.1 square kilometers per day, in the last month of 2024, while the number of daily Russian casualties during this period remained similar to the estimated daily casualty rate in November 2024.

"The Ukrainian General Staff reported a daily Russian personnel casualty average of 1,585 in December 2024, marking a fourth all-time high of Russia's daily casualty rate following reports that Russia's average daily Russian personnel casualty reached a new all-time high of 1,523 casualties per day in November 2024," the report said.

Analysts estimated that the occupiers advanced at a significantly higher rate - 27.96 square kilometers per day in November 2024. And according to Syrskyi, over the past week (since December 23), Russian troops have suffered losses of 1,700 people per day, indicating that they could suffer even greater losses in the last few weeks of 2024, even though their offensive has slowed.

"The Russian military command likely tolerated record levels of personnel casualties from September through November 2024 to facilitate larger territorial gains, but it remains unclear if the Russian military command will be willing to sustain such casualties if Russian forces' rate of advance continues to decline as Russian forces continue to advance on more heavily defended settlements such as Pokrovsk," ISW noted.

As reported earlier, military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko is convinced that 2025 will be more difficult for Ukraine than 2022. Many challenges await the country both on the battlefield and in the geopolitical arena, with the internal factor being the weakest point.

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