Russia has suffered around 1.3 million casualties since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including around 400,000 in 2025 alone, a senior NATO official told journalists in a briefing at NATO Headquarters.
Speaking during a background session on “The situation in Ukraine” on 11 February, the official said Moscow was continuing to make incremental gains along several sectors of the front line, but at a staggering human cost.
“Almost 400,000 dead and wounded in 2025 alone,” the official said. “Russian total killed and wounded in the war now is around 1.3 million.”
The official said Russia’s advances remained modest and primarily tactical, driven by attritional tactics, heavy artillery use, and widespread employment of UAVs, but constrained by manpower quality and logistics.
“Their operational effectiveness is constrained by manpower quality, by logistic strain and adaptation by the opposing forces, which have produced localized gains with no decisive battlefield breakthroughs,” the official said.
Despite Russia’s pressure, the official assessed that Ukraine’s front line remained intact.
“Despite Ukrainian limited reserves and thin defences, the total collapse of Ukrainian defences remains unlikely anytime this year,” they said.
The senior NATO official also described Russia’s campaign as the deadliest in Europe since the Second World War.
Moscow continues to sacrifice more men and women than in any European conflict since the Second World War, the official said, while failing to achieve strategic objectives.
They added that Russia was increasingly seeking to portray Ukraine’s defeat as inevitable through an information campaign exaggerating small territorial gains.
“They often list dozens of tiny villages that are captured, portraying them as major victories,” the official said, adding that such claims did not amount to meaningful breakthroughs.
“War, what is it good for, absolutely nothing”.
“War, its fantastic”
Hot Shots !
(It’s OK, you don’t have to reply, Still !)
30,000+ casualties per month, or 7,000 per week on average. Figure 2,000 KIA, 5,000 WIA each and every week given the horrible state of Russian medical care in the golden hour. Some of those WIA return to their units but many do not, can not.
The Russians are losing the equivalent of 3 or 4 battalions of troops KIA per week. And they have been losing troops at this pace (or reasonably close to it) for the past 4 years. The USSR lost 15k to 26k troops KIA in 10 years of war with Afghanistan and in many ways the Afghanistan war broke the USSR.
And yet Russia is still advancing in Ukraine.
Russia hit Ukraine with 400+ drones and 40+ missiles on February 3rd, and then again on February 7th.
The scale of this war is amazing.
If Ukraine survives this war relatively intact and if Europe continues to support it economically for a few years, Ukraine will come out of this war with one of the great arms industries anywhere in the world. No wonder Putin is terrified. He is reaping what he has sown.
They lost about 10 million troops in the 4 years of WW2 that they had. An average of 50,000 a week which sounds like a line from Blackadder Goes Forth*. Apparently 66% of Soviet men born in 1923 died in that war.
* Captain Blackadder: “For us, the Great War is finito, a war which would be a damn sight simpler if we just stayed in England and shot fifty thousand of our men a week.”
When this war started, I said from the off that it would be a war of attrition. The Russian psych and it’s military doctrine, hasn’t changed since WWII. As has been clearly demonstrated again and again, Russian soldiers are still regarded by their commanders as little more than cannon-fodder. Each yard gained can be calculated by the numbers of bodies thrown into the furnace of war.
That has been, and always will be, the difference between the east and western military doctrine. That’s what makes Russia a terrible foe, not their tanks or bombs, its all about numbers.
If NATO lost 30,000 personnel in one month, imagine the uproar.
The problem is in a peer war it’s very likely even if you don’t adopt the Russian use of men as attritional assets your losses will still be staggering in any U.S. China war the U.S. is likely to loss a good few carrier battle groups.. that’s 7000 dead in one go on one day probably within the short time it would take for the battle group to be overwhelmed. A US US Amphibious Ready Group gets destroyed that’s 5000 dead.. these will not be the grind of the Ukraine Russian war..they will be instant losses..not sure how any modern western nation would take that if it happened say 4-5 times.
To be honest Jonathan, I could see the Chinese with the same mindset not just in people, but with ships too. Their fleet is twice the size of the USN, and whilst the US has more carriers, I’d say that the element of expendability would be a part of the Chinese ‘battle plan’, and definitely become a large part of the equation.
NATO countries, nor the US population could not and would not stomach Ukraine/Russian levels of attrition. The current US leadership’s foreign policy is based on bullyboy tactics however, all you have to do is look at who is currently being bullied/intimidated… Venezuela and Iran. They tried bullying a friend/ally, and the other allies told them to go do one.
The US/Russia issue?.. there isn’t one. Certainly not one that helps Europe or NATO in any way. There’s more to being a world leader than merely bullying the weaker ones in the playground.
China would without doubt go full attrition in naval conflict.. it’s got a will to loose people ( it lost up to 20 million in the cultural revolution) and it can build surface combatants at an astonishing rate.. China could rebuild a 100 strong frigate and destroyer navy in less than a decade.. it would take the US 50 years.
I haven’t been to China since 2010 and yes there been a massive clamp down since then but I still keep in touch with people who live and work there and I do wonder how much would be tolerated. Note once people there got wind there other county’s had lifted there COVD lockdowns and started to protested, the government soon changed direction
Yes but, they are on the whole not going to undertake mass protests.. and the 100million communist party members, 1 cctv cam for very 2 people and 6 million internal security and paramilitary personnel will keep a lid on almost anything other than a full blown revolution… the Chinese are interesting that you can essentially split their preparations for conflict directly into 4
1) security of industrial base and market… they have been A) stockpiling, B) securing raw material lines c) internalising supply chains D) having a process to take any company into state control E) development of internal market
2) internal security, 1) the most advanced monitoring on earth with all cctv essentially networked 2) at least as many internal security troops as there are external combat personnel 3) levering the 100 million communist party members ( the believers ) so that they can manage dissent… total control of all security and police by the party.
3) direct investment in its military…
4) political warfare.. the destruction of the enemy via loss of social cohesion and political will
But china sees 1 and 2 and 4 as just as important as 3… as it plans to collapse the social cohesion and political will of its enemies so will it use any and all means to protect its own.. the Chinese have seriously planned how they are going to take the US out of the western Pacific.
My favourite Hot Shots Line, from Hot Shots 2, is when Charlie Sheen arrives to rescue Rowan Atkinson, who says he can’t go because “they’ve tied my shoelaces together”, & Sheen says, “Damn, a knot!”, so has to carry him out.
Criminal mis-use of power by Putin. Wasting Russian blood & money to ruinously invade a neigbour he’d promised by treaty to respect the territorial soveriegnty of, demonstrating starkley why barely no ex-Soviet nations ever want to be under Russian rule again. Putin & Trump, both throwbacks to 18th/19th colonialism. If only willing allies had been able to intervene early on to tip the scales & defeat conclusively Russian forces, driving them out, so many Ukrainians & Russians would’ve been saved from this terrible grinding war.