Ukraine war latest: Russia claims capture of towns in east as six dead in attacks

Russia’s casualties mounted to a record high of 434,000 in 2024, with 150,000 deaths, Ukraine’s commander in chief of the armed forces said.

The toll is higher than the previous two years combined, he said.

“By our calculations, total [Russian] losses amounted to over 434,000 personnel, of whom approximately 150,000 were killed in 2024 alone,” Ukraine commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrski told a Ukrainian TV channel TSN yesterday. “This year of combat has cost them more than the previous two years of the war combined,” he said.

Russia has lost nearly 819,000 of its soldiers, including those killed, captured or wounded since the start of the invasion. Of these 1,580 casualties were reported in the past day.

Serge in his blue anorak, Olena in her black faux fur jacket – an inconspicuous couple on a trip in Kyiv to show their daughter the capital they did so much to save three years ago.

Their clandestine work as part of self-starting groups of volunteers, heroic by the standards of any war, turned back two invading Russian convoys as they converged on Kyiv in 2022. Serge and a small group of comrades, veterans of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, took on Putin’s invaders in hit-and-run raids using pickup trucks and weapons they found in a warehouse in Sumy province.

Now Donald Trump is threatening to turn the course of history against Ukraine, by cutting US military support to the embattled nation. This could ultimately allow Vladimir Putin to hang on to the 20 per cent of the country Russia has already taken as part of a future peace deal forced on Kyiv.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 43 out of 61 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that targeted nine regions across Ukraine, the air force said.

It said that 15 other drones were “lost”, in reference to Kyiv using electronic warfare to redirect them.

No major damage or casualties were immediately reported by officials.

Trump heads into the White House thoroughly puffed up by his role in securing the Gaza ceasefire, writes World Affairs Editor Sam Kiley. His allies and enemies around the world will now be plotting to exploit his vanity further

Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war’s first year, and control about a fifth of the country. But the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.

In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since the Second World War as Ukraine grabbed a slice of its western Kursk region in a surprise counter-attack on 6 August.

Russia has yet to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and US assessments. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.

“To sustain even the very slow advance in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of part of its own territory by Ukrainian forces,” British security expert Ruth Deyermond said.

“Taking a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of its own land is not what great powers do, particularly one so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty.”

Deyermond, in a long thread posted on X, suggested Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a leading world power were also undermined by the toppling of its chief Middle East ally, former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and its increasing dependence on China.

Mr Putin, the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, said on 19 December that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rebuffed threats to its sovereignty.

With hindsight, he said, he should not have waited until February 2022 before launching his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour.