‘Massive’ Russian losses in Ukraine heading for breaking point, top NATO official says

• NATO’s secretary general said up to 25,000 Russian soldiers are being killed in Ukraine every month.

• Mark Rutte described the carnage as “unsustainable” for Moscow.

• That suggests a tipping point is approaching, although it remains unclear when.

Russia’s military is suffering heavy losses in fighting in Ukraine, with up to 25,000 soldiers killed a month, NATO’s top civilian official said this week, calling the carnage “unsustainable” for Moscow.

“The Russians, at the moment, are losing massive amounts of their soldiers to the Ukrainian defense,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told European lawmakers at a forum in Brussels on Tuesday. He said between 20,000 and 25,000 soldiers are dying each month as the war drags on.

“I’m not talking badly hurt.” Killed. Rutte clarified. He compared the incredibly high losses to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, where about 15,000 of its soldiers were killed over nine years.

“Now I lose this amount or more in a month,” he said of the number of Russian soldiers killed each month. “So that’s also unsustainable on their part.”

Russia has not released official casualty figures, but Ukrainian and Western estimates paint a grim picture for Moscow.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update on Wednesday that Russia may have suffered more than 1.2 million battlefield casualties since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago, with an average of 1,100 soldiers killed and wounded every day last month.

Russia’s average daily casualty rate from August to December 2025 rose steadily, although it was still lower than in the same months of 2024, according to the ministry. It said the recent increase came as Moscow made small territorial gains and heavy losses are expected in 2026 “with continued multi-axis dismounted infantry attacks”.

Russian forces have been focused on capturing the war-torn city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region for more than a year. It was the site of some of the most intense fighting of the war.

Ukrainian officials have said attack drones are the biggest killer of men and equipment on the battlefield, believed to be responsible for eliminating about 90 percent of all targets struck. Military units regularly post images of their combat kills on social media.

Casualty assessments underscore the significant attrition for Russia. It has a much larger population from which to draw new soldiers and recoup losses than Ukraine does. However, Moscow has tried to avoid large-scale involuntary mobilization during the war, and conflict analysts believe it is unlikely to do so anytime soon.

Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russian researcher at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, told Business Insider that Moscow has increasingly relied on covert and informal recruitment networks to avoid full mobilization, which would likely come at an enormous political cost.

Russian military efforts to bring new troops into its war against Ukraine include offering financial benefits to informal recruiters, sourcing combat personnel from overseas and fiddling with legislation on the use of active and inactive reserves, among other unofficial methods, Stepanenko said.

“Before, the Kremlin just assigned your military recruitment centers, some paramilitary organizations and regional authorities to do the recruiting,” she said. Now Moscow has to think: “Where else can we gather recruits?”

U.S. and Ukrainian assessments last year suggested Russia was recruiting an average of 30,000 to 36,000 new soldiers per month to the war, figures similar to its casualty rate. Russian President Vladimir Putin said several thousand people were volunteers.

“It’s definitely a challenge for Russian forces to replace personnel and replace casualties,” Stepanenko said, adding that Russia will “eventually hit a wall” if it does not eventually change its personnel and recruitment system.

Meanwhile, Ukraine, which does not release official casualty figures similar to Russia, is believed to have suffered around 400,000 soldiers killed and wounded. These losses hit hard as Ukraine faces a constant struggle for labor.

The proliferation of drones on the battlefield has made it increasingly difficult to evacuate casualties from a death zone that extends in both directions along the front line, contributing significantly to heavy casualties.

Ukrainian and Western soldiers and officers have said the “golden hour” — the first 60 minutes after a serious injury when medical treatment determines whether a soldier lives or dies — has long passed in this war.

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