The Ukrainian General Staff announced this Monday that Russian forces suffered 2,980 casualties —including dead and wounded— in the last 24 hours, the highest number recorded in a single day since the onset of the large-scale invasion in February 2022, according to El Mundo citing the EFE agency.
The previous record had lasted only eight days: on November 1, Kiev reported 2,500 enemy troops neutralized in a single day, a figure that was already unprecedented in the conflict.
The president Volodimir Zelenski has attributed this accounting capability to the massive use of drones, noting that the Ukrainian army is now able to “obtain images of every soldier killed or wounded on the battlefield.”
In the same 24 hours, Ukraine also reported the destruction of four tanks, 15 armored vehicles, 68 artillery systems, six multiple rocket launchers, two air defense systems, 1,843 drones, and 638 various types of vehicles.
The estimated cumulative balance of Russian casualties according to Kiev since the beginning of the war exceeds 1.6 million personnel, although this figure includes deaths, injuries, missing persons, and those captured, and it does not refer exclusively to fatalities.
The extent of the Russian losses is supported by independent sources. Documents from the Russian statistical service Rosstat, obtained by hacker groups and released last week, indicate that the number of Russian citizens killed on the front ranges between 393,881 and 450,100 since the onset of the conflict. The hackers claim to have compromised around 25,000 computers and extracted nearly 23 terabytes of data from Rosstat's internal infrastructure.
According to Zelensky, only in October Russia lost more than 54,000 men between the dead and the wounded, a figure that makes that month one of the deadliest of the entire war for the Kremlin's forces.
Despite the strain, Moscow has not declared a mandatory general mobilization and continues to supplement its army with voluntary contracts in exchange for money.
However, the signs of internal pressure are becoming increasingly visible: this weekend, Russian authorities issued summons for military conscription to a large number of the nearly 200 young people detained in central Moscow during an operation officially presented as a public order measure, according to Russian media reports.
Zelensky has been warning for months that "the Kremlin will be forced to declare a forced mobilization if it does not put an end to the war."
The record of casualties occurs at a delicate diplomatic moment. Russia and Ukraine are scheduled to meet in Abu Dhabi this Tuesday and Wednesday under U.S. mediation, with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading the Washington delegation.
The pressure from the Trump administration on the parties has been notably asymmetric: while the U.S. president warned Zelenski that refusing an agreement would be "very negative," he has maintained a markedly more conciliatory tone with Putin.
Zelenski, for his part, insists that any negotiation must begin with a ceasefire, before addressing territorial issues.
The British military intelligence estimated in September that Russia has suffered around 500,000 deaths since the beginning of the invasion, a figure that contrasts with the official silence from the Kremlin, which does not release verifiable data about its own casualties.
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