Russia is launching the Kyiv New Year drones, killing two
Russia’s gradual, grinding advance in parts of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk succeeded in wresting away 4,168 sq km (1,609 square miles) of fields and abandoned villages in 2024 – equivalent to 0.69 percent of the country.
This is the assessment of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank founded on satellite imagery and geolocated video imagery.
“Russian forces have seized four mid-sized settlements – Avdiivka, Selydove, Vuhledar, and Kurakhove – in all of 2024, the largest of which had a pre-war population of just over 31,000 people,” said the ISW.
The Russian forces spent 4 months taking Avdiivka and two months for Slydove and Kurakhove.
“The seizure of these colonies did not allow Russian forces to threaten the notable Ukrainian defensive nodes,” said the ISW, adding that Moscow troops had not carried out the immediate and mechanized type of maneuvering to convert these “tactical gains in deep penetrations of the rear of Ukraine. “
At this rate, Russia would need two more years to complete its conquest of Donetsk alone, the ISW assessed – something Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his commanders to do by October 1.
Russia’s sacrifices to achieve these advances have been immense, as Ukrainian forces used their defender’s advantage to inflict high casualties, especially in urban settings where they fought building-to-building, street-to-street.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii said on Monday that Russian forces had suffered an estimated 427,000 wounded and killed in 2024. A few days later, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence put Russia’s losses last year at 430,790 soldiers – the equivalent of 36 Russian motorised rifle divisions – outnumbering its losses in 2022 and 2023 combined.
These losses amounted on average to 1,180 consistent with the day, however, the number of patients highest towards the end of the year, while Russian forces intensified their attacks with the obvious aim of influencing the US election.
The highest monthly losses, the Defence Ministry said, came in November and December – 45,720 and 48,670 respectively – as Russia intensified its attacks in Donetsk.
“This year, the Russians paid the value of the war opposite to Ukraine, because our army and all our defense and security forces in Ukraine have destroyed more devices and enemies of hard work than in all last years of war,” Syrksyi said to his forces in a poster with December 31.
Russia controlled the construction of its daily landscaping across 14 km2 (5. 4 square squares) in October to 28 km2 in November, but returned to 18 km2 (11 square miles) according to the day in December. Apparently, their losses have not been proportionate.
“During the past week, the invaders lost around 1,700 people killed and wounds,” said Syrksyi on Monday.
December also produced two possible Russian casualty records.
On December 29, the Ukrainian staff said the Russian forces had lost 2,010 people. Possibly they would have undergone a historical record of 2,200 losses of a 191 general faced on December 19.
Ukraine also estimated that it had withdrawn 3,689 Russian tanks, thousands of armored fighting cars and more than 13,000 artillery pieces. The Ukrainian military said it was sinking five ships and 458 small handicrafts.
Russia has recruited North Korean fighters to relieve tension in its workforce, Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said a quarter of them had been annihilated.
“According to the initial data, the number of dead North Koreans and injured in the Kursk region already exceeds 3,000 people,” Zelenskyy said in his night speech on December 23.
He more recently claimed Russia was killing North Koreans in danger of falling into the hands of Ukrainian forces.
“Everything is arranged in a way that makes it impossible for us to capture the Koreans as prisoners – their own people are executing them, there are such cases,” Zelenskyy said in an evening address on December 27.
Ukraine’s military intelligence, GUR, said more North Koreans were being brought to Kursk to replace losses.
Putin turns out to have prioritized the opposite war to the economy staff.
He signed a decree on Monday forcing all undocumented migrants to depart Russia by the end of April, but joining the military allows them to circumvent normal legal status requirements.
Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service estimated that Russia suffered a hard-working shortage of another 1. 5 million people last year because the labor force had a decline by one million. However, Putin’s decree would suck foreign personnel into the economy and put them on the front line.
Putin declared the shortage of “hundreds of thousands” at a press convention at the end of the year on December 19, but did not attach the shortage of war. First, he proposed to bring more migrant personnel from the countries of Central Asia.
It has been attributed to the need to “expand a network painting of Russian schools there, examine the Russian language, provide other people to paint here” and talked about the need to develop hard work productivity to higher technologies.
Both Ukraine and Russia have changed to war economies, with Russia financed through fossil and Ukraine fuel revenues financed through their western allies.
Both have sought to become as weapons-autonomous as possible.
In his New Year’s address, Zelenskyy said 30 percent of the weapons Ukraine used last year were domestically made.
“I was ashamed as a citizen that since the ’90s, the state hadn’t seen those people,” he said. than a million drones in a year. “
Ukraine has used aerial and naval drones of its own design to attack in the back of Russia and the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s military intelligence said on Tuesday it used a SeaDragon missile launched from a Magura V naval drone to down a Russian Mi8 helicopter.
“Today, for the first time, a demolished helicopter fell into the water. In other words, the fact of the destruction of an aerial objective on the registered black Sea,” said Kirill Budanov, Chief of Intelligence of Ukraine, to a Telethon.
GUR released footage of the strike. Previously, Russian helicopters struck in this war had managed to reach an airfield, he said.
Russia has also invested in drones, is hindered through Western sanctions opposite to delicate technology imports.
Its drone factory in Alabuga, 1,000 km (620 miles) east of Moscow, produced 5,760 drones in the first few months of last year, Ukrainian intelligence resources told CNN, doubling its production in 2023.
Ukraine said that the Air Force said in 2024 that he faced a risk of missiles and drones much greater opposite to the critical infrastructure than in 2023, in a component because Russia was also drones lure that still do not bring explosives and overcome aerial defenses.
“The enemy is to complicate the aerial scenario as much as possible, overload our aerial defenses and exhaust our defenders of heaven,” said the Air Force.
Over the whole of last year, Ukraine said they had killed 11,200 drones from “strikes,” 7,800 of which were “attacks. “
kyiv faced two hundred air attacks last year, said the municipality, which involved 1,300 drones, more than two hundred cruise missiles and 46 ballistic missiles.
The Attorney General of Ukraine reported the death of a civilian during the night on the eve of the New Year, after a Russian drone crashed into a residential construction in Kiev. otro drone a fireplace at the National Bank of Ukraine.
The drones were part of a huge attack involving 111 Shahed kamikaze drones, Ukraine’s air force said, 63 of which it said it shot down.
Despite its increased arms production, Ukraine has remained highly dependent on its allies.
United States President Joe Biden on Monday announced $2.5bn in military aid to Ukraine, half of it in immediately drawdown capability.
Biden said the package represented the rest of the $60 billion in aid he had signed up for 2024 and included “loads of thousands of artillery series, thousands of rockets, and armored vehicle loads” such as air defense equipment.