The war in Ukraine in 2024-2025 reveals Russia’s strategic failure despite its massive human and material losses.
The war in Ukraine saw an intensification of Russian offensives on several fronts in 2024, with human and material resources deployed on a large scale. Despite localized tactical gains, Russia failed to achieve a strategic breakthrough. Russian military losses exceeded 434,000 soldiers, including 150,000 dead, with an average of 104 losses per kilometer gained. The Ukrainian army, although under pressure and confronted with irregular Western aid, maintained its positions on the majority of the front. This Russian tactical failure, coupled with the Kremlin’s inability to replenish its manpower and compensate for its industrial losses, places Moscow in a military dead end by 2025. The situation offers Ukraine political and strategic room for maneuver if the West maintains its support.
Overconsumption of Russian forces on the front lines
The year 2024 saw the massive mobilization of the Russian army on several fronts: Kharkiv-Luhansk, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk, Chasiv Yar, Vuhledar-Velyka Novosilka and Kurakhove. More than 4,100 km² have been conquered by Moscow, but at a disproportionate human and material cost. The reported loss rate per kilometer is 104 Russian soldiers, an unsustainable ratio for a conventional army.
Total Russian losses since February 2022 are estimated at nearly one million soldiers killed or wounded, according to Ukrainian and Western sources. In 2024 alone, nearly 48% of overall Russian losses were recorded. By comparison, NATO’s offensive in Iraq (2003) resulted in an average loss of 0.4 soldiers per kilometer gained in the initial phases – underlining the archaic and inefficient nature of the Russian command.
In material terms, the losses of Russian equipment on the front are massive: more than 200 tanks destroyed in Avdiivka alone between January and February 2024, the equivalent of two armored brigades. The deficiencies of the Russian military-industrial complex, combined with Western sanctions, make it difficult to compensate for this hemorrhage. The Russian defense sector produces around 150 new tanks per year, well below the needs to compensate for the losses in 2024.
The strategic cost of slow and ineffective progress
The operations conducted in 2024 demonstrated the Russian army’s structural inability to resume a coordinated operational maneuver, which is necessary to generate a break in the front. Even in locally advanced sectors such as Avdiivka, Selydove or Vuhledar, Russian forces have only captured medium-sized agglomerations, without any major strategic effect.
Military analysis shows that the objective of total control of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts remains out of reach. For example, the offensive towards Pokrovsk, which began in February 2024, quickly bogged down. Russia has attempted to modify its doctrine, switching from armored attacks to light infantry assaults using motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles to compensate for the shortage of armor. This adaptation reveals the capacity limitations of the Russian army, which is no longer able to sustain large-scale mechanized offensives.
Furthermore, the Russian artillery, long in surplus, is losing its advantage. The ratio, once 5:1, fell to 1.5:1 by the end of 2024, according to Western intelligence services. This reduction in artillery superiority has limited Russia’s ability to effectively prepare its assaults.
The structural consequences for the Russian army in 2025
The failure of the offensives in 2024 has had lasting repercussions on the Russian strategic balance. The Kremlin has not announced a new large-scale mobilization, although human resources are running out. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the current model is no longer tenable without a massive call-up for conscription. However, such a mobilization would have a high domestic political cost for Vladimir Putin.
In addition, the Russian military-industrial complex is under severe constraints. Western technological sanctions are holding back the production of modern weaponry. Russia now relies on North Korean and Iranian supplies for artillery shells and drones, but these contributions remain marginal in the face of daily losses. The use of prison units such as the Storm-Z detachments, or North Korean foreign forces in Kursk, confirms a widespread recruitment crisis.
Economically, the cost of the conflict is becoming difficult to absorb. In 2024, Russian military spending exceeded 10 trillion rubles (approximately 98 billion euros), representing 6% of GDP. At this rate, Russian financial reserves will erode by the end of 2025, reducing the Kremlin’s budgetary leeway.
Ukraine: operational defense despite constraints
Despite limitations on Western aid in 2024, the Ukrainian army has been able to maintain a coherent defensive line, inflicting heavy losses on Russia. The incursion into Kursk Oblast, which mobilized 78,000 Russian soldiers in February 2025, proved Ukraine’s ability to disrupt the enemy front through an asymmetric war of attrition.
The Ukrainian campaigns of targeted strikes on Russian logistics and oil infrastructures have also weakened the enemy’s offensive capabilities. This strategy, combined with the optimized use of drones, has enabled Kiev to partially compensate for its numerical inferiority.
Ukraine is demonstrating that with regular Western logistical and technological support, it can maintain defensive pressure and even prepare localized counterattacks. But this resistance is conditional on the continuity of Western assistance, without which Ukrainian lines could yield on several axes as early as 2025.
A long-lasting but asymmetrical war
The war in Ukraine is moving towards a long attritional conflict, where Russian numerical superiority is failing to translate into decisive breakthroughs. The structural limitations of the Russian military machine make a rapid reconquest of Ukrainian territory unlikely. Conversely, Ukraine retains its capacity to disrupt and contain.
The strategic challenge therefore lies in the resilience of the West in supporting the Ukrainian effort over the long term. The material and human cost imposed on Moscow can become a lever to get the Kremlin to review its military ambitions, if the pressure is maintained.
War Wings Daily is an independant magazine.