Infographic: Army Sizes of NATO, Russia, and Ukraine

Marcus Lu
2025-03-12 10:22:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

Active Military Personnel Across NATO, Russia and Ukraine

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Discussions regarding Europe’s defenses have ramped up as the U.S. rethinks its military commitments to Ukraine and NATO.

To learn more about this topic, we visualized the number of active military personnel across NATO, Russia, and Ukraine, highlighting how troop numbers stack up in an era of rising geopolitical tensions.

Data and Highlights

The data we used to create this graphic are 2024 NATO estimates sourced from Statista and United24.

Country	Active Military Personnel	NATO Member
Russia	1,500,000
U.S.	1,328,000
Ukraine	880,000
Türkiye	355,200
Poland	202,100
France	200,000
UK	184,860
Germany	181,600
Italy	165,500
Greece	142,700
Spain	133,282
Romania	81,300
Canada	68,000
Hungary	41,600
Netherlands	41,380
Bulgaria	37,000
Czechia	28,000
Belgium	25,000
Sweden	24,400
Portugal	24,000
Finland	24,000
Norway	23,250
Lithuania	23,000
Denmark	20,000
Slovakia	19,500
Latvia	17,250
Croatia	14,325
North Macedonia	9,000
Estonia	7,700
Slovenia	7,300
Albania	6,600
Montenegro	2,350
Luxembourg	1,000

Based on these numbers, NATO has a combined 3.44 million active military personnel, falling to 2.11 million without the United States. If Ukraine were to join NATO, the alliance’s total would increase to 4.32 million.

Will Ukraine join NATO?

If the U.S. were to withdraw from NATO, it would leave a massive gap in the alliance’s strength.

As a result, there is mounting pressure for Ukraine’s entry into NATO to be expedited. Here’s a brief timeline of key events regarding Ukraine’s NATO ambitions:

• 2008: NATO allies agree at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine can become a member
• 2017: Ukraine adopts legislation reinstating membership in NATO as a strategic foreign & security policy objective
• 2020: Zelenskyy approves Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, which lays a path for membership in NATO
• 2024: Allies reaffirm Ukraine’s future in NATO, though it must remain independent in the face of Russia’s invasion according to former NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg.

What Does Europe Need to Protect Itself?

According to a recent report, Europe would need to build up a massive land force in the Baltics if the U.S. were to withdraw its military assets from the region.

This force would need 1,400 tanks, 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, 700 artillery pieces, and one million 155mm shells for the first 3 months of a hypothetical Russian breakthrough scenario.

It’s worthy to point out that European NATO members have significantly increased their defense spending in the last two years.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

If you enjoyed this graphic, check out this breakdown of $1.3 trillion in NATO defense spending on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

The post Infographic: Army Sizes of NATO, Russia, and Ukraine appeared first on Visual Capitalist.

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