Rutte warns young Russians they are likely to die in Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte used a press conference in Kyiv on June 3 to send an unusually direct message to young Russians considering enlistment: if they sign up for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, they are likely to die. Standing beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rutte said they were being sold a “raw deal,” a warning aimed not only at the Kremlin but at Russian families weighing the human cost of continued recruitment.

The message was more than rhetoric. Rutte said Russia was losing more than 30,000 soldiers a month in Ukraine, a pace he compared with the Soviet Union’s losses over 10 years in Afghanistan. He described those losses as “substantial” and “absolutely staggering,” and said Russia was growing increasingly desperate as its economy came under serious strain. The point was clear: Moscow is still feeding the war with new recruits, but the price in casualties is crushing and visible.

The setting amplified the warning. NATO said the visit included its historic first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting in Kyiv and the full North Atlantic Council, putting all 32 allies in the Ukrainian capital as Russian strikes continued to threaten the city. Rutte’s comments came as Ukraine faced another wave of attacks, including a recent strike that killed 23 civilians and wounded 151 more across the country. The same day, Ukraine hit an oil terminal in St. Petersburg with long-range drones, underscoring how the war has expanded into sustained strikes deep inside Russia.

By speaking directly to young Russians, NATO was trying to shape morale beyond the battlefield. The alliance’s message is that the war is not a path to security or status, but a grinding conflict that is draining Russia’s future and forcing ordinary young men to bear the burden. Russia has tried to keep replenishing its forces with cash bonuses and other incentives rather than risk another unpopular mass mobilization, even as the Kremlin portrays NATO expansion as an existential threat.

Rutte’s remarks also fit the alliance’s broader effort to keep pressure on Moscow while signaling unity with Kyiv. On May 22, he said Zelenskyy had already been invited to the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8. In Kyiv, that diplomatic line and the battlefield message came together: Russia’s war is costing lives at a pace that NATO wants young Russians, and their families, to hear plainly.