The number of Russian soldiers killed in action in the war in Ukraine has jumped in recent weeks, a dynamic that — if sustained — could make it hard for the Kremlin to replace troops without some form of mobilization, according to European estimates.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Kyiv’s forces killed 35,000 Russian troops in December. In the grim calculus of war, he cited an ambition to raise that number to 50,000 by this summer — a figure that would roughly double the monthly average calculated by NATO in 2025.
The higher lethality is a result of more effective Ukrainian drone operations, with the ratio of killed to wounded skewing recently toward war dead, according to assessments from multiple European governments. With those estimates showing that the number of fatalities has reached the Kremlin’s recruitment level, several of the people said the trajectory would make it difficult to replace losses without a mobilization drive.