Russia gained 4,000sq km of Ukraine in 2024. How many soldiers did it lose?

Russia this week claimed to have captured the resource-rich town of Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine, as its forces ground forward in the region nearly three years into the war.

Even as Ukraine launched a new offensive in Russia’s Kursk, leaving residents shaken, Moscow’s forces have continued to make slow gains in eastern Ukraine. That attritional war appears to be taking a toll on the morale of Ukrainian forces who face manpower struggles in the face of relentless attacks from Russia.

Now, stunning new numbers are pointing to a sharp escalation in the costs the war is imposing on both sides in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. Russia gained Ukrainian territory twice the size of Mauritius in 2024, experts say. But how many soldiers did it lose in the process?

How much Ukrainian territory did Russia grab in 2024?

Russian forces gained 4,168 square kilometres (1,609 square miles) of Ukrainian land in 2024, according to geolocated evidence collected by the Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

That’s twice the size of the Indian Ocean nation of Mauritius and five times the area of New York City.

Russian territorial gains in 2024 largely comprise fields and small settlements in Ukraine, apart from territory it regained from Ukraine in Kursk, according to the ISW.

Additionally, Russia gained Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar, and Kurakhove, four mid-sized settlements, the ISW reported.

How many soldiers did Russia lose? What Ukraine says

As of December 30, 2024, 427,000 Russian soldiers died or were injured in the war in 2024, according to Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskii.

In a release published on January 2, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry placed Russia’s losses last year at 430,790 soldiers.

Based on the more recent number, the Russian losses in 2024 amount to an average of 1,180 per day, and about 103 losses per square kilometre gained.

According to Ukraine, the Russian losses increased towards the end of the year. The Defence Ministry said the highest losses came in November, with 45,720 losses, and December, with 48,670 losses. It is unclear how many of these Russian soldiers were killed and how many were injured and therefore removed from the battlefield.

How many soldiers did Russia lose? What others say

According to the independent Russian website Mediazona, at least 31,481 Russian soldiers are confirmed to have died between January 1, 2024, and December 17, 2024.

Mediazona uses open-source research to compile the names of Russian soldiers killed, verifying the information through obituaries, posts by relatives, statements from local authorities and other public reports.

The Mediazona website says that the numbers for 2024 are “preliminary conclusions,” stating that: “2024 appears set to become the war’s deadliest year. While this can’t yet be proven conclusively, as casualty data emerges with considerable delay.”

Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify these numbers.

“It seems likely that Russian deaths are in the 100,000-plus [range],” Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, told Al Jazeera.

However, in an interview with French news outlet Le Monde, published on December 17, Ukrainian commander Syrskii said that the number of Russian troops in Ukraine also appeared to be constantly increasing.

Oleg Ignatov, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, said that comments like Syrskii’s raise questions – how are Russian troop numbers in Ukraine growing if Moscow is suffering such devastating losses?

“We don’t know whether [this is because] the Russian recruitment model is good, or there are not as many [Russian] casualties [as is claimed],” he said.

Why is it difficult to verify death tolls?

In part, this is because those numbers wield immense propaganda value for both sides.

“There is a war of narratives from both sides. Both sides use numbers trying to demonstrate its successes on the ground and to undermine the other side. These narratives are part of the war,” Ignatov told Al Jazeera.

On December 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in a Telegram post that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died in the battlefield since the beginning of the war in February 2022. The last time he had announced a death toll for Ukrainian soldiers was in February 2024, when he said 31,000 Ukrainian troops were killed. This would mean, 12,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in the battlefield over about 10 months in 2024.

However, neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly publishes statistics about the number of soldiers lost in the war.

This is because they want to avoid giving the other party insight into how effective their military operations have been, Marina Miron, a researcher at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera in October.

This is not an uncommon wartime strategy: During World War II, for instance, each side underreported their casualties by half and exaggerated enemy casualties by two to three times, said Miron.

There are other factors as well. The death of a soldier is only confirmed once the body has been found, after which the concerned defence ministry sends a death notification to the family.

Miron told Al Jazeera in October that if a government does not officially accept a soldier as dead, it avoids needing to pay the families of the deceased.

Is the number of Russian deaths a record?

Regardless of exactly how many Russian soldiers have lost their lives in the war, and especially in 2024, experts are unanimous in concluding that the casualty figures for Russia are in record numbers – the highest since World War II. During World War II, an estimated 8.7 million Soviet military personnel were killed – by far the highest for any country. Of the 15 Soviet republics, Russia lost the most soldiers – an estimated 6.7 million.

In the Soviet-Afghan war, which lasted 10 years, the Soviet army suffered about 15,000 casualties. During the Vietnam War, which lasted 20 years, the US Army lost 58,220 soldiers.

“Russian losses in Ukraine seem to be many multiples of this,” Ash said.

“The impact on Russian society will be felt for years to come. Think of the human cost and then healthcare and economic cost of that – on the workforce,” he said. That, Ash added, “partly explains current tight labour markets in Russia and high wage-price inflation”.

“Russia already had a terrible demographic mix and this war has made it much worse.”

What about the territorial gains in 2024? Were they significant?

Experts say that the territorial gains made by Russia and Ukraine are of limited strategic importance to either country.

“Ukraine can survive and prosper economically without the land Russia currently occupies, but what is important therein is security for the rest of Ukraine. That’s why the terms of the peace are so important for Ukraine,” Ash said.

“For Russia, the land captured makes little positive impact economically or strategically,” he added.

In fact, Ash argued, the occupied Ukrainian territory “will be a huge burden to the Russian economy to fund reconstruction”.

“And this is at a time when the Russian economy is starved of resources due to sanctions,” he said.

Ignatov added that the accession of territory by either side was not central to the war. Instead, “it’s a war of attrition – casualties, material, infrastructure is what matters”.

Neither side, he said, appears “interested in ceasefire so far”. As its manpower losses mount, Ignatov suggested that Moscow might face a challenge in 2025. “We don’t know how sustainable the Russian recruitment model is and we don’t know if Russia has to mobilise this year,” he said.

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