In just one month, Russia has lost more soldiers in Ukraine than the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Over 30,000 Russian soldiers died in December alone, Mark Rutte said.
Over 30,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine in the last month (December 2025), NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
„In December, the Russians were losing a thousand people per day - not seriously injured, but killed. That's over 30,000 people for December. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Soviet Union lost 20,000 people in 10 years. Now, in just one month, 30,000 Russian soldiers have been killed," Rutte noted, whose statement was also posted on the NATO website. At the same time, Russia "continues the offensive" and intensifies its attacks, the Alliance Secretary General also noted.
According to Mark Rutte, Ukraine lacks fighter-interceptors and American military equipment to defend itself. In this regard, the NATO chief defined the defense of Ukraine as a priority task, since it "is of crucial importance for our security - of Europe and the United States". When asked by journalists whether US President Donald Trump supports Ukraine's independence, Rutte answered in the affirmative.
More data on Russian losses in Ukraine
In mid-January, Mark Rutte said that between 20,000 and 25,000 Russian soldiers were dying each month in the war in Ukraine. Then he also compared these figures with the losses of the USSR in Afghanistan.
At the same time, the data on the losses of the Russian side in the war differ. In December 2025, NATO estimated the total number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine at about 1.15 million people, of whom 250,000 died. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army believes that over 1.2 million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war so far.
The Russian Ministry of Defense has not published official data on its own losses for a long time. At the same time, journalists from the Russian service of the BBC and the publication “Mediazona“ managed to compile a list of the names of over 163,000 Russian soldiers who died in the war by mid-January.
What are the Ukrainian losses?
There is no current official information on Ukraine's losses in the war. In February 2025, the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that since February 2022, over 45,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 390,000 have been wounded. A few months earlier, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Valery Gerasimov, estimated Ukrainian losses in the war at about one million people - killed and wounded.
Data from the "Ukrainian Losses" project, which collects information from open sources, indicate that Ukrainian losses so far have exceeded 177,000: 87,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed, almost as many - 86,000 - were missing without a trace, and over 4,400 others were taken prisoner.