Media: NATO says Russia's losses in Ukraine are growing, with 530,000 troops lost last year alone

NATO has noted that losses among Russian occupation forces in Ukraine have increased, as they reached more than 530,000 soldiers killed and wounded over 2024 alone.

According to Politico, an unnamed NATO official said that Russia had lost a total of 837,000 soldiers killed and wounded in the three years of the full-scale invasion.

The source also added that in January alone, Russia fired 10,900 rounds of ammunition to attack Ukraine, the vast majority of which were Shahed attack drones.

Nevertheless, he stressed that Ukraine had achieved some success in retaliatory attacks on targets in Russia. In particular, strikes on Russian oil and gas infrastructure have led to a decline in supplies to Russian refineries by about 2.5% compared to last year.

The NATO representative also spoke about North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. He said that there were currently 11,000 North Korean troops in the region, but a relatively small proportion of North Koreans are involved in the fighting, while the rest are behind the front line.

The official noted that it is much more difficult for the DPRK military to adapt to drone attacks than their Russian counterparts and that they mainly "rely on waves of human attacks".

Earlier, UK intelligence, based on statistics provided by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, called January 2025 the worst month of losses for Russia after December 2024.

The Estonian Defence Forces Intelligence Centre estimated that in January 2025, capturing one square kilometre of Ukrainian territory cost Russia the lives of 100 soldiers from its armed forces.