Because I’m a stickler for getting to the root of things, and will always follow up on important issues as they develop, I wanted to start with a continuation of a previous line.
they claim a lot of things, including ghosts, great offensives, etc. arent much to comment as everything UA said so far was total BS..
However, there are PLENTY UA propaganda channels on tube that will tell their supporters all of the fantasy news they want to hear, UA armies surrounding Novosibirsk already as all european part of RU has been conquered, UA police on Red Square already, RU economy is dead and population is starving, washing machine chips are running out and last ones are nurtured by hand by Shoigu, etc. Standard UA 'news'. Also, overflowing cemeteries in UA and 'no losses' and shooting down 150 rockets out of 50 launched. Oh yes - also ability to shot down hypersonics (USA cannot but UA can, they even demoed fake 'Kinjal' shutdown)
So if you want UA news - every mainstream media is full of BS out of Kiev.
I've said this on the last post, and I'll say this again:
"You can project losses of about 800,000: - out of which 400,000 would be wounded, roughly half can return - 400,000 killed" - Bebo
Do you honestly believe a 1:1 casualty ratio?
For reference, the US had a 1:2 casualty ratio (kia to wia) in WW2. 80 years ago. With no sterile gauze, no tourniquets, no modern antibiotics, no thermal blankets, chest sealants, blood packs, little to no possibility to ever call in medevac. So tell me, how can you possibly claim that Ukraine, where they have all of the above, even if not in abundance, but infinitely more than the US army of 1940 ever did, has the worse survival rate?
How can you claim that despite all the advances in medicine and first aid in combat compared to nearly a century ago, the amount of wounded that are saved was somehow cut in half?
I personally don't necessarily believe it's quite that high, I was just offering one quick take/perspective. One telling fact is that long ago, the EU technocrats shocked the world by openly stating Ukraine has "100k casualties", now Ursula has repeated the act and is openly stating Ukraine has "200k casualties". However they're tempering that by claiming Russia has 300k for 500k total lost in the war. The Russian figure is clearly just cope in order to 'soften' the blow of Ukraine's casulaties.
So my point is if Ukraine's handlers are already openly admitting to 200k casualties, it must give us pause as to what the actual true casualties are, certainly much higher than they'd admit.
I've posted before but one of the sources which tracks Ukraine's casualties (as opposed to Russian ones like MediaZona etc.) is "wartears.org". They track them professionally by way of similar methods as MediaZona uses, like obituaries and other things though they end up extrapolating their figures with an equation to get an estimation.
Their current estimate for DEAD only, not counting wounded is 280,000, which is not too far off from very rough napkin calculations like the above: https://i.imgur.com/YLYsix3.jpg
Personally I've always tended to hew to more cautious estimations. I had maybe 70k dead for them early this year. However, this year, between Bakhmut (where Prigozhin says 60-70k AFU died just there alone) to the counter-offensive where numerous sources say another 70k have died thus far (Putin/MOD plus DPR officials like Yan Gagin confirming this number). That means this year alone could have brought an additional 120-140k dead (potentially) on top of the earlier 70-100k from last year, so I'm now open to the possibility that at minimum 200k are dead/KIA give or take.
As for how Ukraine can have worse survival rate than WW2, it IS possible and the explanation is simple: Russia has far more precision systems and lethal capabilities than any military in WW2 which means the hits are more accurate and more consistently produce KIA compared to WW2.
Secondly, the state of the Ukrainian military is such that a lot of the time their triage and medical capabilities are either on par or even *worse* than anything in WW2.
" I'm now open to the possibility that at minimum 200k are dead/KIA give or take."
LOL. Good luck with that figure. This is where people start assuming: "Ukraine had one million men, they only lost 200,000, most of the wounded returned to duty, so Ukraine still has 700-800,000 men in the field."
Bullshit. If they had that many in the field, their offensive would have worked. Even the US DoD said Ukraine only used, I think it was 135,000, men in this summer offensive. If they had more they would have used more.
As I've said, the performance in the field tells the story. Everything else is speculation.
A Ukrainian soldier said 305,000 KIA a while back and Zelensky himself said 250,000 KIA quite some time ago. A survey of new graves found 400,000 KIA. The figure is definitely 300-400,000 KIA. How many mobilizations have they gone through now? Eight? Isn't that eight whole armies?
Indeed. Back when the war started, the Russian MoD reported around 250-300 KIA per day. Add in wounded and the non-DBA strikes and the actual loss figure was at least 500 and could be as high as 1,000 per day. So Ukraine was losing 15-30,000 men per month since the war started. So after ten month or so, they would have lost 150-300,000. Then their losses accelerated during the fall offensives, then Bakhmut, and now the summer offensive. The MoD average today is over 700 KIA, although it's dropped a bit in the last week or so. So where anyone gets a total of 200K KIA is beyond me.
On the topic of Syria, about a year ago there was a good deal of commentary about Syrian volunteers being recruited to serve alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. To your knowledge did anything come of that?
A survey of graveyards calculated that 400,000 had died so far based on counting new graves in Ukraine. Keep in mind a lot probably got incinerated too. A Ukrainian soldier stated there were 305,000 KIA, but that was a while back.
Not buying a 1:1 KIA - WIA ratio for one second, sorry.
AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
Obviously the Russian casualty figures touted by the UA/NATO side are bunk, that's not even close.
200k KIA doesn't seem as unreasonable. But I still find the 400k numbers outragous. Yes, Russian guidance systems have improved exponantially over what was available in WW2, however, the thing that's actually doing the damage after the guidance is complete (i.e. good old 152mm HE) have not changed that much, especially in the fragmented, small unit engagements of trench warfare we're seeing. Only lately have we been starting to see large columns of fresh, inexperienced AFU soldiers making the mistake of bunching all together. So it takes less shells, or other munitions to inflict a given number of casualties, but I don't see anyone justify the claim that the KIA to WIA ratios of those casualties shifted. And you need to see significant and undeniable evidence to justify such tremendous claimed shifts in these ratios.
Also, there's no way the AFU has worse medical care than WW2 armies. Because we had so much medical and first aid advances, whatever the AFU is lacking compared to them (like maybe number of supplies, doctors, etc.) they would not only have to have less of, but infinitely less of, because modern tourniquets alone save an innumerable number of lives, that would have required much more "work" to save back then.
Also, we see the "meat wagons" (i.e. medevac) continuously bringing the wounded (and even the dead) back to the rear. If the situation was so dire, and they had no spare capacity, why would they be recovering a significant number of KIAs, just to bury them?
Most NAYOYO soldiers demand recovery of wounded and dead. AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
"the thing that's actually doing the damage after the guidance is complete (i.e. good old 152mm HE) have not changed that much"
Oh yes they have. The 'thing' that actually did the damage in WW2 was not 152mm HE rounds as you suggest. The norm for tube artillery in WW2 was in the 75mm to 105mm range, and for mortars it was 81 and 82mm tubes. Nowadays the norm is 152mm and 155mm for tube artillery and 120mm for mortars.
Yes, there were higher calibre guns in WW2 too, but they were not the norm, just as TOS-1A's aren't the norm now. They were the exceptions. In WW2, the vast majority of artillery-inflicted casualties came from these lower calibre rounds. Higher calibre rounds as a rule are more deadly in a literal sense. They are more likely to inflict KIA's.
Add to that the constant and real time surveillance of today and the deadliness grows even greater. In WW2 an area was targeted with a given number of rounds and you had to hope you hit the enemy. That's no longer the case. You can see exactly where he is, and walk your fire to exactly that spot and fire until you exactly hit them. In other words, until you hit them close enough with a killing blow, rather than merely one that might have injured them.
Artillery fire, including its effectiveness and deadliness, is nowhere near similar to what it was in WW2. It's too soon to make any definitive statements, but everything points to artillery (as used by Russia at least) is now far more deadly (again, in a literal sense) then in WW2.
There are not many medical advances to heal a shrapnel or bullet wound.
They had Sulfonamid to disinfect a wound in WW2. That wasn't any worse than Penicillin is today. And a tourniquet isn't high tech either. You can do the same thing with a shirt and a stick if you need to.
And what more are you supposed to do? A surgery in the middle of the field?
The size of the group is much more important. If they storm with 10 men into a trench and one gets hurt. Carrying that one person to safety already means to cancel the attack, because you need 4, which will cut your group in half.
Meanwhile if you are in a singular battle of 100k active soldiers, ten of those can be occupied with saving you and it would still not drastically decrease the success.
Look at the videos of Ukrainian medics trying to evacuate soldiers. This is not at all more advanced. They do nothing that you wouldn't have been able to do in WW2.
AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
You are extrapolating from bad data and adding in your own confirmation bias. Just because there's video of meat wagons, doesn't mean that what you see occurs across the whole front, or even a significant part of it. There's far more video of squads (5-6 men) being bombed, and 2 or 3 of them going down. The survivors then have to choose who they can save, because dragging just one wounded to aid takes 3-4 men.
c1ue has covered the basics re US Army in WW2, but I'll point out the following...
All successful first aid is predicated on the "Golden Hour".
You just *ONE* hour to get your wounded soldier to a Field Hospital, NOT just a First Aid Post. Past that point, if they have tourniquets on limbs, those limbs are lost.
If the the bleed is not controlled, they are dead.
If the wound is to the body and there's internal bleeding, they are dead.
Ukraine simply does not have the men, materials or infrastructure that followed the US Army around in WW2. Anything within 40km of the front line is is the war zone.
Has anyone seen ANY pictures of Field Hospitals within that zone on the Ukraine side?? If they don't exist, then that just makes it that much harder for wounded to survive.
They also strongly suggest that the ratio of killed to wounded for battlefield incidents is much, much worse for the Ukrainian side than most people believe it is, due to 'missing' this Golden Hour to get the wounded adequate help.
You missing wide use of thermobarics, from hand-held Shmels, to absolutely horrific TOS, to MLRS with special ammunitions (see, all ranges covered). Thermobarics don't leave wounded. You literally can't even count dead in epicenter afterwards. Also, there are hundreds of drone videos of UA forces leaving wounded behind.
The figure I use for KIA:WIA ratio is 1.67. This is based on a survey done by the Ukrainian International Institute of Sociology, which reported that virtually every family in Ukraine had suffered three killed and between 5 and 7 wounded. That works out to 1.67. It may not be accurate but it's the only figure we have.
Interestingly, for the Russians, whenever they have reported KIA and WIA in specific instances, it has almost always been the standard rule-of-thumb 1:3. And they claim 97% return to duty.
And for the past year of heavy Ukrainian losses, the issue has clearly been that Ukraine wounded are either dying on the field due to poor retrieval practices or die in transit to primary care. This has been reported repeatedly by medical personnel in Ukraine IIRC. The Russians have no such problems, according to reports that the minute someone gets a scratch they're rolled up and out of there and back in a rear hospital within an hour.
So I think we can believe that Ukraine's KIA to WIA ratio is almost, but not quite, 1:1. Closer to 1:2 than 1:1 but not anywhere near 1:3.
As I wrote in my Substack on these issues, if you believe the Russian MoD and do the math, Ukraine is losing 60-100,000 losses per month - and that is with conservative estimates including the 1.67 KIA:WiA ratio.
Martyanov believes Ukraine has lost around one million or more since the start. I don't vouch for that number, but it's also not impossible depending on how much unreported casualties there are, as represented by the "non-battle-damage-assessed" strikes Russia carries out every day. You have to count those, too, which no one but me does, but we have no idea how effective those actually are. Almost certainly, however, they are larger than the conservative figure of a mere two KIA and WIA that I use.
The real result shows on the field. Ukraine simply is accomplishing nothing - which means they have next to nothing left, neither men nor materiel.
Your math is wrong. 3:6 is 2, not 1.67. A 1:2 ratio gives us 400,000 dead and 800,000 wounded for 1.2 million total casualties, close to Martyanov's figure.
It's not 3:6, it's 3:5 or 3:7, from the Ukrainian poll. 5 is 1.67 times 3. I took the lower figure to be conservative. Yes, a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio - I think Martyanov uses the latter - does bring us around one million. But we don't know it's 1:2 or 1:3. The only figure we have is the Ukrainian survey. It may not be actually accurate as it only measures what happens to families which might not be identical to the battlefield, but it's all we have. But as I said, it could easily be one million. 200K is ludicrous.
This boils down to the semantics of, what do you count as a casualty? When people talk about wounded in this context, they are talking about people that are so wounded that they are a permanent casualty, they will never return to duty.
If you instead define wounded as anyone that got a papercut, you got a totally different figure. The same soldier can have been lightly wounded 7 times and still be fighting. Do we count that soldier are 0, 1 or 7 casualties?
1:1 KIA to permanently wounded is not unrealistic, especially considering how poor their medical situation is. While medical technology has advanced, Ukraines medical system is extremely strained and getting evacuated on a modern battlefields when you have a person wounded in a field with a dozen drones flying overhead correcting artillery fire is far harder than evacuating wounded in WW2.
There were several independent accounts on how RUAF handles wounded. You literally get manhandled by at least two soldiers, who cut your uniform and check the source of bleeding. If it's slightly bigger than papercut - you are sent to the rear immediately (I think you probably sent to the rear anyways, unless you want to keep fighting barechested, Conan style). It's starkly contrasts with what UA or even Wagner does - they are often keep fighting wounded.
Like it or not, but casualties are handled very differently between RU/UA in this war
"So tell me, how can you possibly claim that Ukraine, where they have all of the above, even if not in abundance, but infinitely more than the US army of 1940 ever did, has the worse survival rate?"
I'm assuming that's not a rhetorical question, so I'll answer it. Note please that I'll answer HOW it is possible, which is not the same as saying that the claims of 400k plus dead are correct. I don't know if they are, but they certainly could be true.
Your problem with the comparison with the US is that you're comparing apples and oranges. In the Ukraine nearly every wounded man who can return to service does. That was not the case for the US in WW2, far from it. Also, the number of men in the US army grew, while those in the Ukrainian forces have (after an initial increase) been steadily decreasing. These two factors have major implications for the total number of killed vs wounded.
The thing you are forgetting is that wounded men who return to the front 'join the lottery' again and run a serious risk to become killed or permanently injured this second (or third, or fourth) time around, while the reverse, the dead or permanently injured being merely wounded, can't happen! This isn't a single 'dice throw' but a continuously repeating one in which the temporarily wounded keep coming back to compete for 'the big prize'.
Now, if the overall size of the 'target population' (in statistical terms) stays the same or grows, this doesn't matter all that much, but it does in a declining population size. Sooner or later, the majority will be KIA or permanently injured, and if you go on long enough, the vast majority will be!
That's because in a declining population the ratio of inflicted dead to wounded may still be the same FOR ANY SINGLE 'DICE ROLL', but the absolute numbers are not the same between 'dice rolls'. And because wounded return to duty, and hence to the risk of being killed the second time round (or third, or fourth, etc), the ratio of dead to wounded (in a declining target population) gradually grows closer and closer to around 1:1.
Note, the 1:1 here assumes that the number of KIA and permanently injured are the same, and if you go on long enough (throw the proverbial statistical dice often enough in a declining population) then almost everyone will end up either dead or permanently injured.
If there's a greater chance of becoming KIA rather than permanently injured than it can even go further, like 1 : 0.8 (five KIA for every four permanently wounded). Also note that the number of temporarily wounded would approach zero in the end (if you throw the dice often enough) so they wouldn't even be a factor any more.
Here's a simple example:
Target population 1000
for each round, 10% chance KIA, 10% chance Perm WIA, 20% Temp WIA (overall KIA to WIA of 1:3).
Round 1: 100 KIA, 100 Perm WIA, 200 Temp WIA
Remaining Target population: 800 (the Temp WIA return to duty)
Round 2: 80 KIA, 80 Perm WIA, 160 Temp WIA
Remaining Target Population: 640
Round 3: 64 KIA, 64 Perm WIA, 128 Temp WIA
Remaining Target population: 512
So after just three rounds, nearly 50% are casualties of some kind, but at which ratio? Let's add them up:
100 + 80 + 64 = 244 KIA
100 + 80 + 64 = 244 Perm WIA
128 Temp WIA (who have yet to recover and return to duty for round 4).
Total WIA is 244 + 128 = 372 WIA
We started with a KIA to (total) WIA ration of 1:3. But now it is 244 : 372 or 1 : 1,52.
So even though the chances for getting killed vs wounded remain the same each round, because of the returning WIA's and declining numbers, the absolute ratio over all rounds combined has shifted radically.
The advances in medicine you referred to, actually make it more likely for WIA's to return to duty now, and thereby increases their chances of ultimately (after additional rounds of 'dice throwing') ending up as a KIA or permanently wounded. So somewhat ironically, those advances end up skewing the ratio towards MORE KIA's and permanently WIA's, not less.
EDIT: One important issue I forgot to point out, there is a huge difference between the number of men who ARE wounded and the number of men who HAVE BEEN wounded, as the first does not include the men who have recovered and are no longer considered to be wounded. So when people are discussing these numbers or talking about ratios, always be aware which of the two they are referring to!
In my example I used total number of men who ARE wounded, not who HAVE BEEN wounded, as the final remaining population of 512 also includes previously wounded men who have fully recovered and who have not yet become KIA or permanently WIA.
The advances in medicine and first aid in combat are irrelevant when there is no air evac; when soldiers are walking 4-5 km on foot to the front lines - hence have to bring back casualties the same distance on foot; when lightly wounded soldiers are sent back into combat repeatedly; and when the Ukrainian hospital system is overloaded (by their own admission) at frequent and regular intervals.
The US army in WW2 is a terrible example because they were attacking a largely already defeated and significantly second rate part of the German army, had air superiority if not air supremacy, and also was not facing an opponent with significantly higher artillery capabilities than their own.
That's true for the offensive, but not the war in general. We see plenty of cases of Ukraine hauling off their wounded, and even dead, in medevac M113s
What about all the cases where we DON'T see medevac or recovery of the dead??
Because it is CERTAIN that we don't have video of everyone on the battlefield...
You are extrapolating from a single data point, it doesn't work.
Since we seem to be comparing to WW2, look up the story where a mathematician was asked to look at battle damaged planes, and come up with a better armour scheme.
His suggestion?
Put more armour where the returned planes have no bullet holes.
Why there?
Because planes that get hit there are obviously not coming back.
You are looking at returned planes, and ignoring the ones that got shot down.
Survivorship bias would occur if you only looked at AFU bodycam footage (obviously if then you would only see footage from AFU who manages to make it out alive). Also, "survivorship bias" applies the other way around, too. For every medevac mission you see filmed, there are many more that don't get filmed or published.
I'm trained and have worked as a QA engineer, I'm not ignorant to sampling, statistics, indicators.
But if you claim the AFU manages to save only half the amount of wounded as compared to a WW2 army, despite clearly having more modern and effective capabilities, in whatever quantities, you better have undeniable, irrefutable evidence of such outrageous claim, not just "Oh yeah, they totally have no medical supplies and need to walk 20 kilometers on to get to a medic. It's so much worse for them than WW2, trust me bro". (I doubt they lack medical supplies, because we hear nothing about how "Ukraine needs disinfectant/sterile gauze/tourniquets to win the offensive", and during an offensive, WW2 troops had to walk the wounded back on foot too")
I'm saying that coordinated medevac during an assault didn't exist in WW2. You couldn't just call in a medevac unit, because they didn't know where you were, and probably you didn't even know exactly where you were.
Survivorship bias doesn't matter in this instance. I don't even know how it would apply. The fact that we see medevac happen regularly (whether it's from a Russian observation drones, or via an AFU bodycam) indicates that they coordinate the evacuation of the wounded and dead regularly, a capability that simply didn't exist for WW2 infantry. Sure, if you had a jeep you could haul the wounded back, but there was no way to call the evac teams to you.
But arguing about what-aboutism and things we don't know is pointless. Let's rely on raw numbers, here's another calculation you can simply do:
We know that Ukraine had 60-80k NATO trained troops saved up for this offensive. Let's assume they managed to train up another 60-80k, while undertaking offensive operations (which is unlikely, because it took them all spring to train up this many, so I doubt they can train the same amount in the same time frame during the offensive). But let's assume they doubled that with fresh draftees, 120-160k total troops to throw as meat at the Russians. Their meat assaults are still underway, so that means they are yet not nearly out of reserves, they may have 10-20k more. So their maximum casualty figures for this 3,5 months of fighting at most can be around 110-140k-ish. If we assume an extremely steep 1:1 KIA ratio, like Bebo did, that gives us 50-70k dead over 3.5 months of fighting. The war started 19 months ago. So if we extrapolate their current level of attrition (20k KIA a month) from a period where they are literally sending human waves out into the open to be mowed down by Russian defenders, and assume they were taking that amount of damage during the entirety of this conflict, we would get around 380k KIAs for the totality of the war. Except of course for most of the time, they weren't running out into the open to be gunned down, they were hiding, and Russia needed to dig them out trench by trench, pillbox by pillbox, house by house with artillery and drones (back then they didn't even have UMPCs en masse, and Ukrainie had a much more threatening AD presence, as well as much larger percentage of trained professional soldiers as opposed to the mostly fresh draftees they have now).
Anything near or over the "400k dead" number is simply ludicrous.
The situation isn't bad everywhere, but it is bad wherever it really matters i.e. the lost fight for Artemovsk, this latest summer counteroffensive, even during last year's "successful" counteroffensive.
So if you are Ukrainian and wounded in Kherson, you might be ok unless you were one of the suckers trying to get a foodhold on the East Bank of the Dnieper, or one of the guys grandstanding on an abandoned oil well, or trying to attack the Zaporozhia nuclear power plant, etc etc. Avdiivka also - relatively not that many casualties.
But overall - I very strongly suspect that medical care for wounded Ukrainian soldiers, overall, is very poor by WW2 standards if perhaps not as bad as WW1, almost pre-penicillin levels.
Perhaps you should spend more time following various Telegram channels that show battlefield videos.
The Ukies are literally meat assault. They get hit by everything Since they're on foot. Modern warfare is gruesome as artillery shell flattens a whole squad. Suicide drones follow retreating soldiers. And these soldiers are on foot. Even evac APCs do a shit work with drivers worried they'll be next casualties. You'll see these on Telegram. So the Ukie wounded don't get send back from the battlefield. They die there from their wounds.
I think you can’t compare Ukraine with 1945 US annd expect Ukraine to have a better rate for several reasons.
1 - US was an absolute economic behemoth in 1940s. It was even bigger than nowadays China.
This means that it’s economical resources where several orders of magnitude above today Ukraine.
US could mobilise a enormous number of doctors, nurses, and in general take care of wounded.
Ukraine is a barely survival country, break and all the money it receives means weapons, not medical transports or doctors/nurses in the front.
2 - US land troops fought an already defeated enemy, Nazi Germany, whose better troops were fighting in the East and whose industrial resources were bombed by the American/British airforce during years.
The correct comparison would be Ukraine ratio with Germany ratio.
3 - US in 1945 cares about it soldiers, it didn’t send them to suicidal missions. Indeed even Germany cared about its soldiers.
Ukraine is ruled by fanatic psychopaths that care about their soldiers the same than Al Qaeda or ISIS.
4 - Nowadays medicine is no better in the sense you point. Antibiotics already existed. And while operations in hospitals and diagnostics has increased a lot, there is nothing particularly better that can be used in mass numbers. Mobile operations like FIV need to be provided.
4 - This war in Ukranian side looks almost like 19century.
Compare the trenches in the IWW, of concrete, clean, with clear exits and rooms for doctors with the mud trenches of Ukraine where the wounded are in contact with water and all kind of dirtiness.
Personally I don’t see any sense in being prudent with Ukrainian loses.
People like to be too conservative but we should only analyse facts.
They are fighting an enemy that is superior in artillery, that is very superior in air support, they are using crazy tactics and attacking pointless for PR wins.
They are absolutely delusional and cold to their life
They have the cover of the most powerful media machine in history, a machine that we know lie without shame.
All people making mathematical models of any kind point to the 400k. The number of tombs, the extrapolation with captured in combat, the words from Ukranian prisioners, the number of mobilisation.
What more is needed? 400k death is a horrific number, but it where all analysis points
UAF casualties are the absolute key metric in this conflcit and I have concluded that they are impossible to assess with any degree of accuracy except that they are really bad. As in really bad there will be a collapse sooner or later. How close in elapsed time that is is hard to say. Both sides lie and obfuscate, and for good reason.
RF losses have been a fraction of those of the UAF and Russia has a mobilisable population 4X to 5X that of Ukraine.
Firepower is king. And the Russians have the guns, the shells, the missiles, the aircraft and the bombs. And the poor saps in the UAF are advancing on foot against fortified positions covered by obstacles and mines, with limited air and fire support.
I feel sorry for them.
However this is not a one sided shooting match and Russian losses will not I think be the 1/7 or 1/10 those of the UAF. Maybe 1/3 to 1/4.
You're assuming that they can even get medical care in all of these engagements. If you look at the "must watch video" in this post, you'll see at least one context where this would not be expected...bodies littered everywhere, and the soldier saying very clearly that they cannot collect the dead nor evacuate the injured so they die on the battlefield of otherwise treatable injuries. I'm not saying that this is always the case, obviously there are many cases where the injured are evacuated, medical care is administered, and the streets of western Ukraine become populated with veterans missing various limbs and suffering trauma that will last a lifetime.
Well, to save a wounded soldier you have to treat them at the front, then evacuate them and then get them to a hospital or such.
Ukraine has given their soldiers no training beyond, "you should put a tourniquet on it"
They dont seem to evacuate very well, when they do theres no vehicle, or it gets blown up too and i seriously question ukrainian healthcare for its troops after watching videos here.
"That’s why I stand by my reporting of Russia only using 70-80k men in the opening stages of the SMO, and not much more than that even by the time of the first year anniversary."
At one point last year, Lavrov quoted a figure of 100-120K troops - and I believe he was not including the Donbass militias, although he may have been including the Rosqvardia, the Volunteer Battalions, the Chechens and Wagner, who knows. So that's the figure I've assumed since then. I consider 70-80K to be unlikely due to being low, but again who knows - no one but the Russian General Staff. And it's mostly irrelevant anyway - except for the below issue.
The other figure I always dispute is that Russia was "out-numbered 3 to 1" at the outset of the war. Since Ukraine only had 250,000 troops in the field and only half of them at the contact line, I fail to see how Russia's 100K - give or take 20K - could be "outnumbered 3 to 1" (not to mention the Donbass militias who numbered anywhere from 25-50,000 depending on another "who knows" figure). Maybe later when Ukraine mobilized its 400K reserves, but not during the first couple weeks. But it's become the standard view that Russia was heavily outnumbered. People forget that troops scattered all over Ukraine don't actually count except in logistic matters until they reach the front.
If Ukraine had that many troops, why did they have such a hard time with the 40K Russians that came down from Belarus? It probably took Ukraine weeks to get those Territorials and reserves mobilized.
I find all this bean-counting of bodies to be a waste of time. What matters is performance on the field and that depends on strategy and operations. Speaking of which, you might find this article of interest that I ran across the other day on the NATO Defense College site:
Equally sadly, it will be easily dismissed as selection bias (you only showed war mongering Ukrainians and Peacenik Russians, the rest you edited out)
The reality is that only the "war mongering", the brainwashed, the hate filled and those without means to leave have stayed in Kiev (plus your usual large chunk of those who just want to get by, or can't believe reality). The rest have fled West or East, as their choices have taken them.
As wounded rates are always at least 3X higher than KIA, if KIA is 400,000, which I believe is correct, then WIA must be at least 1.2 million. That leaves us with 1.6 million total casualties. Keep in mind that they are sending most of the wounded back to the front.
In a given battlefield incident the ratio of KIA to WIA is usually around 1 : 3, but you cannot then extrapolate that to the conflict as a whole, because most Ukrainian wounded return to the front after some time for a new opportunity to be killed. The longer this goes on the more it skews the ratio towards fewer WIA per KIA. By now it has almost certainly dropped below 1 : 2 (for total loss figures), and I strongly suspect it has already dropped below 1 : 1,5.
Moldava and Armenia have been on the flip list of the West since way back, seems it is about to happen. It gets to the point where you wonder if the West just thinks "Fuck it" Just declare war and get it over with.
Don't worry about Moldova :) Outside powers have been trying to "flip" it for over a century, with hilarious results (Moldovans are the second-most stubborn people in Europe after the gypsies).
I have never understood why everyone doesn't roll about laughing every time Zelensky says they are fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy.
But not only does no one laugh but no one comments on it afterwards. Not even in places like this where I'd expect some derisive comment perhaps, or better, some dry as dust precise dissection of the facts to demonstrate what a ludicrous contention it is.
But nothing. Why?
And he says 'where will Putin stop?' Like Putin is a rabid invader sweeping through the land. Does he not understand the invader in Ukraine is Kiev, which is invading Donbas? And Putin/Russia has invaded nothing/nowhere (barring that initial farcical thing) but is everywhere behind the lines, the borders of States that not only welcome them but are now Federated with them?
Does he not understand that the Russians after their initial 'invasion' quickly retreated behind lines that had been establish in 2014 by Kiev's invasion ?
Of course he knows.
Everyone knows.
Just as they know of Russia's peace proposals Kiev twice rejected.
So what is he talking about? Is he lunatic or just a consummate liar/actor?
"So what is he talking about? Is he lunatic or just a consummate liar/actor?"
Think for a second. ALL actors are necessarily liars, else they would not be on the stage. What are you doing when you are playing a role, especially one contrary to your personality? You are engaging in a massive lie, a charade on the level of a con artist adopting a completely new persona. What are you doing when you are reciting your lines? In many cases, you are lying because you are saying things that you don't even believe in yourself. Therefore it is trivial for any actor to be the consummate lying politician. This is why I say never elect an actor as president. Never elect a businessman either, but that's another matter.
As you can see, as far as Zelensky is concerned, the very *idea* of the truth is meaningless. He's just playing a role, no matter what he does, and truth is irrelevant to stagecraft. In fact, it's antithetical to it. When he speaks, he's just "saying his lines" as if he were in a movie. Of course an actor's lines have nothing to with the truth and are often antithetical to it.
An actor's entire life is a gigantic lie. Everything he does is a role. Everything he says is a line. In addition to the fact that pathological narcissism is a job requirement, is it any wonder that their relationships are so short-lived, many, and chaotic? Marry an actor and you marry a fraud and a pathological liar. When two actors marry, you are literally SPLITTING A TWO-SIDED ATOM of fraud and pathological dishonesty. Kaboom!
Yep. I can see that much of course. My point is why lack of reaction from us? Any of us? Especially, mainly, with a view to informing those millions that apparently BELIEVE him?
And docilely allow their governments to ruin their nations and promote the deaths of thousands of dumb fools...
Yep. I wrote as though I mainly wondered about him.
Hey, propaganda works! 24-7 full spectrum propaganda works. The people I talk to simply refuse to listen to any facts from our side. They dismiss all of them as Russian disinformation. Most of our info comes from the Russians, which is all dismissed, and a lot also comes from pro-Russian voices on the web, which is also all dismissed. It's really a circular argument. How do we know the argument is fake? Because Russians or pro-Russians say it. But all of the info on our side is necessarily from Russians or pro-Russians, so all of our info will always be fake.
The people I know, you can't even mention the word "Russia" in front of them. It's similar with China. Americans just swallow all of the patriotard propaganda 100%. I point this out to these people and they say they often go against US foreign policy, but then you hardly ever find a case where they do. And when they do they are very quiet and almost ashamed about it.
Really it's just partiotardism. You can oppose US domestic policy because it's one side or the other pushing it. You can oppose Republicans without hating America. But US foreign policy is supported full hilt by both parties all the way with little if any opposition. If you oppose US foreign policy, that means you HATE AMERICA. If you oppose the Pentagon then you hate America (especially true with veterans). If you oppose the CIA and FBI then you hate America! Democrats now are much more supportive of US foreign policy, the Pentagon, CIA and FBI than Republicans are, which is a 180 degree shift.
The Vietnam War generation liberals who opposed US foreign policy, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI are dead and gone or they all changed and went full patriotard.
Seriously, if you oppose US foreign policy, then you are saying "America is a bad country." Foreign policy is equated to the nation itself. Opposing US foreign policy is saying fuck the US and burning the flag. You can't oppose US foreign policy without concluding that we suck as a country, and no partiotard will admit to that. And the overwhelming majority of Americans, including almost all liberals and progressives, are full blown patriotards! The only anti-patriotards now are on the Right!
You oppose US foreign policy and almost every liberal and progressive will tell you, "America, love it or leave it." "If you don't like it here, then leave!" I hear this all the time from liberal Democrats. Remember when it was rightwingers who said that during the Vietnam War? Liberals and conservatives have traded places.
There's also a lot of peer pressure. Right now everyone for Russia is being openly called a traitor. There are demands to have Congressional hearings into Musk and others for treason! We aren't even at war with Russia but everyone treats it like we are. You go against US foreign policy and your name is mud everywhere you go, no exceptions. Most people are cowards and just go along with the crowd.
Yes I know what you mean. This is a very widespread, very common thing. Been going on forever.
What it is is the tyranny of the braindead. And that includes those that can't think, those that won't think, those that are cunningly thinking and are tricking everyone all the time and so on.
Overall they are not worth talking to. It's largely a waste of time.
Overall they simply are stupid: either by accident or design.
So don't talk to them.
But outsmart them.
And if you can't outsmart them then who's the stupid one?
You don't talk to them.
You plant 'memes' or slogans or thoughts or something in them and then leave them to it.
Like you may slap the guy on the back and say: 'Gotta support Ukraine, Jimmy, don't we - full on, absolutely, full on wholehearted support for Donbas Ukrainians is what I say, right Jim?" and then peel off and go away.
Don't get into a conversation with him. You do NOT talk to them IS the point.
Or maybe something after the style of: 'Every bastard in Ukraine standing on land he wasn't invited onto by the owner should be shot, right Jimmy?'
Or maybe 'Nothing wrong with having Stefan Bandera for a hero, is there, Jim? What? He never killed many - maybe 50,000 Poles is all - well that's not so much. We killed more Iraqis than that and we weren't even helping the Nazis, eh?'
And so on. See?
And all those idiots have people all around them. Wives, husbands, friends, children, workmates and so many of whom know those idiots to be idiots but say nothing.
Planting things with the idiot within earshot of them can have beneficial effects you know little of. Even out of earshot for the idiot will possibly repeat it: 'You know what this crazy guy said to me today...?"
And not just memes and such.
Simple statements: 'That Simplicius guy on substack seems to know a thing or two'
Anything that opens doors, that plants seeds.
It's all there. It's an attitude. A mindset. Thinking you're beat before you start and by a pack of idiots is no way to proceed.
postscript: I came back to add this: You have to forego the satisfaction of face to face debate/discussion and making your point.
That satisfaction is not available to you and that's not what we're playing for. We're playing for much larger stakes.
I must tell you that this damned propaganda works so great that when I expose myself to it for a while, I start to doubt myself and wonder if the Ukrainians are really the good guys after all. Of course, everything I've been told says that's not so, but this just goes to show you the power of 24-7 full spectrum propaganda on blast. Anyone else experience this creepy feeling?
On the other hand, I have an extremely open mind such that I am ready to chuck just about any non-personal belief system, especially political or sociological, in a heartbeat. I always read the other side to see what they're saying. It's actually rather painful and I think most just won't do it. But I don't want to be believing anything that's not true in worldly affairs. I imagine most people could care less whether what they believe is true or not. If it makes them feel good, it's true. If not, it's false.
That's why I ended up partly on the left and partly on right. Of course, I am a man of the Left, but that's only because I'm convinced after decades of study that we are right. And all those conclusions of decades of thinking are up for grabs too! However, on a few things lately we on the Left have just gone too far and we're not even correct anymore. In a word, we are spouting falsehoods. Well, I'm not down with that! If the Right is correct on any issue out there, I will go with them on it.
I advise everyone here to do this if you have the guts and can take it. Always be throwing your worldly beliefs up against the wall to reality test them against the opposition. Everything worldly you believe should be up for grabs. It's difficult, but it also leads you on these endless "searches for the ultimate truth" behind everything controversial, and those are rather fun expeditions, at least for me. Sort of like going to the Brain Gym for a workout.
Why on Earth should I believe things that are not true? Outside of one's personal life, I don't get it. But I'm also trained as a journalist and that's supposed to be our game: the truth.
Yep. Good for you. You know what weighs heavily with me for deciding who is 'good' and who is 'bad' in this particular example of human cupidity and stupidity?
It's like what Viktor Orban said: the job of a politician is to protect his people. Well quite simply Kiev and Washington are protecting no one.
They are trying to protect govt. control, authority, despotism and they don't care if all the people die during the course of their 'protection' if at the end of they can look at the land and declare it is theirs, that their govt. control, their reach, their mandate, their power, covers it all.
THAT's what they are about and if that's not as clear as a bright summer day I don't know what ever could be.
"I have never understood why everyone doesn't roll about laughing every time Zelensky says they are fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy."
Same reason why everyone didn't roll about laughing every time a US president said they were fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy. When the village idiot holds a live grenade, it's better for your own health not to laugh at them (openly) as you may inadvertently draw his attention, and ire. Grenades are dangerous, and village idiots are unpredictable.
The Russo-Ukrainian war is about many things -- land, resources, geopolitics, and so on. However, it's also a clash of ideologies, with Ukraine representing multicultural liberal democracy, and Russia representing the authoritarian traditionalist ethnostate (while Russia has significant minorities, I'd argue it's still an ethnostate, analogous to Israel); or in Duginist terms, the "open society" vs the "closed society".
So, when the slava ukraini crowd goes on about "defending democracy" and "fighting fascism", this is actually what they mean. Of course, liberalism has become decadent and oppressive, while the authoritarian regimes are in many ways healthier, but you have to be red-pilled to understand that. The believers in Western ideology have become detached from reality, as seen in their credulity in the fantasy narrative of Ukrainian victory and the supposed Russian evil/patheticness.
Liberalism has had a long winning streak, but I believe it will soon come to an end, in either Cold War II or WWIII (depending on how far this escalates); it'll be a massive shock for the West, but I believe it's justified at this point. Z
"According to the people's deputy, Zelensky will be given weapons and will stop insisting on the mandatory elections next year in exchange for total mobilization and sending everyone to the front - from women and teenagers to the disabled and the elderly."
That's one of the saddest things I've read recently. It doesn't even make me feel angry, though there is a bit of that. It's just SAD as Hell, man. SAD.
Of course I'm for Russia and I completely hate these Nazis, but in general I refuse to watch most of the war footage, even drone footage of material being hit because I know there are humans near that material. I can't watch anything that shows Ukrainian troops dying or their dead bodies. I just can't handle it. They're human beings, whatever their ideology is, and God knows even WHAT their ideology is at this point.
Keep in mind that a majority of Americans, I think 58%, oppose further military aid to Ukraine. But boy you sure never hear one word about that in the media, do you?
Because nobody of influence and authority cares a fig for public opinion except when it provides a convenient pretext to do what the elites already want to do.
Yeah, but then how do you explain both parties still allocating said aid? The MSM explains it as serving their base, but I think that base is actually the MIC.
Both parties and the MSM go along with the Deep State or the National Security State (the foreign policy establishment of the US) all the way. They don't care what the population thinks. The Deep State wants this war so both parties are for it and so is the entire MSM. The foreign policy establishment of the US or the Deep State are the people who actually run this country!
"And the overwhelming majority of Americans, including almost all liberals and progressives, are full blown patriotards!" (with patriotards referring to people who support US foreign policy no matter what).
The two appear to be a contradiction. I don't mean this as a personal criticism towards you, because both statements appear to be more or less correct to me too, yet put together they do form a contradiction. Which suggests that a majority of Americans have contradictory opinions in their head on this subject. I was wondering what your ideas on this are, as you posted both statements, and appear to have a first person experience of the American mindset that I, from across the big pond, lack.
It's not contradictory at all. People turn on US foreign policy at some point. They wanted us to leave Iraq and Afghanistan after a while. Even the patriotards were for that but they both supported both of those wars to the hilt. Patriotards tire of wars after years, but they still supported them in the first place. The Democrat patriotards I know who were against the war (quietly) from the start also never wanted to leave and justified our staying even after the Iraqi Legislature had ordered us to leave.
Well, now you can be a patriotard and still oppose more aid to Ukraine. The patriotards are supporting the Nazis in their war against Russia. The anti-patriotard and "America-hating" position is to be pro-Russia! That's the "treasonous" position. They continue to support Ukraine and they really hate Russia, but they've turned on aid for Ukraine, although you never hear anyone talk like that in the media because it's 100% voices in favor of more military aid to Ukraine. So the position of literally the majority of Americans has no voice.
And for sure the liberals and progressives are still wildly pro-Ukraine. These are the people I listen to every day. KPFK for instance, Pacifica, the most leftwing station on the dial, and Daily Kos, ground zero for the left wing or base of the Democratic Party continue to be almost fanatically pro-Nazi.
The people I talk to every day are diehard patriotards, liberal to moderate Democrats. They will almost never oppose anything that US foreign policy does, perhaps especially now that a Democrat is in. But then they were the same way under Trump too, even though they hated him, as his foreign policy was still sacrosanct. That's what got me thinking why foreign policy seems immune to the two party split in US politics, and I concluded that opposing US foreign policy must be seen as treason by most people, certainly by most liberals anymore.
What's it like over there wrt British foreign policy?
I'm not British, but reside in one of the European nations that has no foreign policy of its own worthy of the name. Firstly, it is all about being a good lapdog to American international interests and secondly, to let unelected EU technocrats tell us what our foreign policy ought to be, which 'we' then pretty much follow unquestioningly.
The only times when it gets a little bit interesting is when the interests of our American overlords clash with those of our EU masters. It never last long as the latter nearly always fold, and usually rather quickly too. Presumably once they've been sufficiently bribed to change their tune.
Generally speaking. most of the public here, as in the rest of northern and north-western Europe considers themselves to be morally superior to the rest of the world, including the US, although few will be entirely conscious of their own mindset. It's more akin to a religious belief rather than coherent thought or a well reasoned argument. And if someone is remotely aware of it, they justify it by arguing to oneself that we mean well for everyone, and that if everyone would just do what we tell them to do, we'd all be better off. As a whole, we're rather arrogant.
They assume that as a consequence of our moral superiority, which is unquestionable, much like religious dogma, their opinions on how the world is and on how it ought to be are also morally superior, and pretty much infallible. For example, they really believe that Russia will lose for no other reason than that 'we are good and they are bad, so they will lose to us'. They see it as a moral imperative so are convinced it will happen.
It's fascinating really as it almost completely divorces (desired) outcomes from real actions that need to be taken for those outcomes to come true. Why make an effort to achieve a certain outcome if you are convinced it will come to pass anyway? They genuinely believe for example that electricity used to power factories is bad (for the environment) and that at the same time electricity used to power electric cars is harmless. To them, something is real, or will be real, just because they believe in it hard enough. Objective reality is more and more ignored and seen as a nuisance disturbing the dream.
This sense of deep-seated moral superiority is primarily based on the view that our northern and north-western European countries have societies that are organised on vastly superior principles, and one could even say that many people believe them to be the ultimately best possible way to organise a society (and these countries constantly bicker between themselves on the details).
Societies which are organised or based along different principles are not only looked down upon, but that condescending view is (mostly subconsciously) then extended to the people living in those societies (along the lines of: "if they were as smart or morally advanced as we are, they would have the same kinds of societies as we do, but they don't, so they can't be as smart or morally advanced as we are, which proves that we are superior to them").
It's all getting rather delusional over here I must say.
Aurelien has been writing extensively on the different aspect of this delusional world view that is so prevalent in the West (and he writes from a mostly European perspective, French in particular):
This sort of mindset is very similar to the mindset of the patriotards I talk to. Keep in mind that they are liberal Democrats for the most part! Most Americans literally think the US is the greatest country in the world. I asked an America-hating Leftist once about this and he also insisted that we are the greatest country in the world. This translates into extreme arrogance about the superiority of our military and its ability to destroy any opponent without much problem at all.
Keep in mind that the liberal Democrats I talked to fully justified sending CLUSTER BOMBS to Ukraine. It was amazing because there were actual a few liberal Democrat dissidents on this question who opposed this, some even saying it was evil.
Some of those foreign volunteers come across as mind numbingly naive. You'd think they would do a little homework before fighting for the murderous, authoritarian regime in Kiev, or perhaps most accurately DC's puppets in Kiev.
They are in the most part ex "War on Terror" soldiers or Walter Mitty's meaning that they have no idea what the whole scenario we trained for in BAOR (and NATO) in Germany trained for and expected. Full on, all out meat grinder warfare where within 72 hours NATO expected massive chemical attacks and theatre nuclear exchanges.
A lot were making money off Youtube postings as Rambo's against the Soviet Hordes and basically Fuck em...You got what you deserved. Who the fuck runs to a war that has nothing directly affecting you or your country.
Those British mercs must be SAS forces if they're being targeted by Russians. I'm not sure what 'vile volunteers' that guy was referring to but funny enough he wasn't blaming Russians.
Seems like Wagner and MoD still need to sort out the wrinkles between them but is anyone surprised how the whole Prigozhyn saga went stone cold and nobody talks anymore about who killed him? As if everyone knows, accepts and approves...Is Surovikin taking over Wagner in Africa?
The military recruitment ads were pretty interesting..at least we're getting some information out of Russian MoD :)
The best reaction in the last civilian opinion was the Russian guy who said its bad because they're our future cities 😀
The video is saying they are being killed by other mercs? Do we have any evidence who is killing these guys? Is it pro-Russians behind the scenes or is it their fellow mercs?
If Russian KIA's had been anywhere near that level that the West likes to throw out, then it would be all over the net. Even the Russian ability to suppress negative information is limited, it's not the NKVD and Pravda times anymore.
Thank you SOOO much for the videos. This line ''British mercenaries are fleeing Ukraine because they are terrified for their lives due to the recent uptick in mercenaries being extrajudicially killed, or rather assassinated by their own people" brought such JOY to my heart. THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for yet another superbly comprehensive analysis.
A couple of comments:
1) Croatia has now also joined the banning of Ukrainian grain. Romania, meanwhile, has tentatively decided to do it as well but only due to extreme domestic political pressure (i.e. the US-puppet gov't is purely in favor of unlimited grain imports from Ukraine, but the populace is opposed).
2) Don't forget both Poland and Slovakia are going to have really consequential general elections soon, so a lot of the grandstanding going on is related to that.
3) Brazil's president also canceled a 1-on-1 with Zelensky in New York due to Zelensky acting like an ass, as usual.
4) The whole Artsakh situation is incredibly complex and difficult to understand precisely because there is a seemingly incomprehensible desire on the part of Yerevan to ditch Stepanakert once and for all despite the fact that they're all ethnic Armenians, members of the Armenian church, speak the same language, etc. Armenia is always a bit weird as well because more Armenians live abroad than in Armenia (and Artstakh) itself.
5) At this point, I believe that >50% of all the munitions being produced on the planet right now are in the Korean peninsula (both North and South combined), which is... NOT GOOD (for world peace).
6) A friend of mine from Western Europe just got back from Kiev (just went to visit a good friend), and the stories he told me were beyond surreal - just think "Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe.
There is a SERIOUSLY large number of people in Kiev who are now very, very rich and living it up to the max, with long lines at trendy restaurants and upscale grocery stores with hugely inflated prices, and the more expensive, the longer the line (because it's cool/trendy/upscale). Luxury cars are on every street. Everyone ignores the air raid sirens and anyway, they're turned off on the weekends to "let people sleep." In short, from Kiev (the city's) POV, it's "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL."
My buddy asked his (Ukrainian local) friend to take him somewhere to get a photo of some bomb or missile damage or some other kind of photographic "souvenir" of the war, and it was a hard task to fulfill. Eventually, my buddy got taken to an apartment building with obviously missile damage, and the Ukrainian friend openly admitted it was caused by an errant Ukrainian AD missile, not a Russian one. In other words, my friend couldn't find even a single Russian-damaged building to photograph in all of Kiev.
If you're in Kiev, it truly DOES appear like Ukraine is kicking Russia's ass, and life is good. Literally everyone remaining has a pipeline to foreign money, whether it's directly via corruption/nepotism or via channels like foreign NGOs (which are FLUSH with money), the UN, or online jobs where you can charge triple because you're Ukrainian (and thus hiring you is "helping the war effort" and something you can brag about on your corporate webpage). But the whole thing has a ghastly danse macabre feel to it.
No surprise then at all that Kiev residents think bombing Russian cities is a jolly affair.
This is also why you should view *any* news from Poland in light of the bitterly contested upcoming election. Slovakia, i don't know so well, but I know Poland very well.
Do you know, during the worst hyper-inflationary periods in the Weimar republic, the same phenomenon occured, the lavish spending, expensive restaurants filled to the brim, etc. It was because everyone knew that by the next day the money they had would be worthless in all likelihood.
It's obviously not exactly the same situation, but I wonder if it isn't closely related. Perhaps they feel, esp. after the utter catastrophe of the counteroink, that doom and death is just arm's length away one way or another, and they should live it up while the can.
they claim a lot of things, including ghosts, great offensives, etc. arent much to comment as everything UA said so far was total BS..
However, there are PLENTY UA propaganda channels on tube that will tell their supporters all of the fantasy news they want to hear, UA armies surrounding Novosibirsk already as all european part of RU has been conquered, UA police on Red Square already, RU economy is dead and population is starving, washing machine chips are running out and last ones are nurtured by hand by Shoigu, etc. Standard UA 'news'. Also, overflowing cemeteries in UA and 'no losses' and shooting down 150 rockets out of 50 launched. Oh yes - also ability to shot down hypersonics (USA cannot but UA can, they even demoed fake 'Kinjal' shutdown)
So if you want UA news - every mainstream media is full of BS out of Kiev.
I've said this on the last post, and I'll say this again:
"You can project losses of about 800,000: - out of which 400,000 would be wounded, roughly half can return - 400,000 killed" - Bebo
Do you honestly believe a 1:1 casualty ratio?
For reference, the US had a 1:2 casualty ratio (kia to wia) in WW2. 80 years ago. With no sterile gauze, no tourniquets, no modern antibiotics, no thermal blankets, chest sealants, blood packs, little to no possibility to ever call in medevac. So tell me, how can you possibly claim that Ukraine, where they have all of the above, even if not in abundance, but infinitely more than the US army of 1940 ever did, has the worse survival rate?
How can you claim that despite all the advances in medicine and first aid in combat compared to nearly a century ago, the amount of wounded that are saved was somehow cut in half?
I personally don't necessarily believe it's quite that high, I was just offering one quick take/perspective. One telling fact is that long ago, the EU technocrats shocked the world by openly stating Ukraine has "100k casualties", now Ursula has repeated the act and is openly stating Ukraine has "200k casualties". However they're tempering that by claiming Russia has 300k for 500k total lost in the war. The Russian figure is clearly just cope in order to 'soften' the blow of Ukraine's casulaties.
So my point is if Ukraine's handlers are already openly admitting to 200k casualties, it must give us pause as to what the actual true casualties are, certainly much higher than they'd admit.
I've posted before but one of the sources which tracks Ukraine's casualties (as opposed to Russian ones like MediaZona etc.) is "wartears.org". They track them professionally by way of similar methods as MediaZona uses, like obituaries and other things though they end up extrapolating their figures with an equation to get an estimation.
Their current estimate for DEAD only, not counting wounded is 280,000, which is not too far off from very rough napkin calculations like the above: https://i.imgur.com/YLYsix3.jpg
Personally I've always tended to hew to more cautious estimations. I had maybe 70k dead for them early this year. However, this year, between Bakhmut (where Prigozhin says 60-70k AFU died just there alone) to the counter-offensive where numerous sources say another 70k have died thus far (Putin/MOD plus DPR officials like Yan Gagin confirming this number). That means this year alone could have brought an additional 120-140k dead (potentially) on top of the earlier 70-100k from last year, so I'm now open to the possibility that at minimum 200k are dead/KIA give or take.
As for how Ukraine can have worse survival rate than WW2, it IS possible and the explanation is simple: Russia has far more precision systems and lethal capabilities than any military in WW2 which means the hits are more accurate and more consistently produce KIA compared to WW2.
Secondly, the state of the Ukrainian military is such that a lot of the time their triage and medical capabilities are either on par or even *worse* than anything in WW2.
" I'm now open to the possibility that at minimum 200k are dead/KIA give or take."
LOL. Good luck with that figure. This is where people start assuming: "Ukraine had one million men, they only lost 200,000, most of the wounded returned to duty, so Ukraine still has 700-800,000 men in the field."
Bullshit. If they had that many in the field, their offensive would have worked. Even the US DoD said Ukraine only used, I think it was 135,000, men in this summer offensive. If they had more they would have used more.
As I've said, the performance in the field tells the story. Everything else is speculation.
A Ukrainian soldier said 305,000 KIA a while back and Zelensky himself said 250,000 KIA quite some time ago. A survey of new graves found 400,000 KIA. The figure is definitely 300-400,000 KIA. How many mobilizations have they gone through now? Eight? Isn't that eight whole armies?
Indeed. Back when the war started, the Russian MoD reported around 250-300 KIA per day. Add in wounded and the non-DBA strikes and the actual loss figure was at least 500 and could be as high as 1,000 per day. So Ukraine was losing 15-30,000 men per month since the war started. So after ten month or so, they would have lost 150-300,000. Then their losses accelerated during the fall offensives, then Bakhmut, and now the summer offensive. The MoD average today is over 700 KIA, although it's dropped a bit in the last week or so. So where anyone gets a total of 200K KIA is beyond me.
Thanks very much for this article.
On the topic of Syria, about a year ago there was a good deal of commentary about Syrian volunteers being recruited to serve alongside Russian forces in Ukraine. To your knowledge did anything come of that?
Thanks again for your great work.
Apparently not as far as I can tell.
I'm sure the Ukrainian politicians are billing NATO for the wages of 1 million men.
A survey of graveyards calculated that 400,000 had died so far based on counting new graves in Ukraine. Keep in mind a lot probably got incinerated too. A Ukrainian soldier stated there were 305,000 KIA, but that was a while back.
Not buying a 1:1 KIA - WIA ratio for one second, sorry.
AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
Obviously the Russian casualty figures touted by the UA/NATO side are bunk, that's not even close.
200k KIA doesn't seem as unreasonable. But I still find the 400k numbers outragous. Yes, Russian guidance systems have improved exponantially over what was available in WW2, however, the thing that's actually doing the damage after the guidance is complete (i.e. good old 152mm HE) have not changed that much, especially in the fragmented, small unit engagements of trench warfare we're seeing. Only lately have we been starting to see large columns of fresh, inexperienced AFU soldiers making the mistake of bunching all together. So it takes less shells, or other munitions to inflict a given number of casualties, but I don't see anyone justify the claim that the KIA to WIA ratios of those casualties shifted. And you need to see significant and undeniable evidence to justify such tremendous claimed shifts in these ratios.
Also, there's no way the AFU has worse medical care than WW2 armies. Because we had so much medical and first aid advances, whatever the AFU is lacking compared to them (like maybe number of supplies, doctors, etc.) they would not only have to have less of, but infinitely less of, because modern tourniquets alone save an innumerable number of lives, that would have required much more "work" to save back then.
Also, we see the "meat wagons" (i.e. medevac) continuously bringing the wounded (and even the dead) back to the rear. If the situation was so dire, and they had no spare capacity, why would they be recovering a significant number of KIAs, just to bury them?
"there's no way the AFU has worse medical care than WW2 armies."
Yes, there is.
American armies in WW2 didn't have to carry their casualties 4-5 km on foot to get to medical care.
American armies in WW2 didn't have artillery inferiority.
American armies in WW2 didn't face the types of mines, drones and what not that the AFU does.
Most NAYOYO soldiers demand recovery of wounded and dead. AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
"the thing that's actually doing the damage after the guidance is complete (i.e. good old 152mm HE) have not changed that much"
Oh yes they have. The 'thing' that actually did the damage in WW2 was not 152mm HE rounds as you suggest. The norm for tube artillery in WW2 was in the 75mm to 105mm range, and for mortars it was 81 and 82mm tubes. Nowadays the norm is 152mm and 155mm for tube artillery and 120mm for mortars.
Yes, there were higher calibre guns in WW2 too, but they were not the norm, just as TOS-1A's aren't the norm now. They were the exceptions. In WW2, the vast majority of artillery-inflicted casualties came from these lower calibre rounds. Higher calibre rounds as a rule are more deadly in a literal sense. They are more likely to inflict KIA's.
Add to that the constant and real time surveillance of today and the deadliness grows even greater. In WW2 an area was targeted with a given number of rounds and you had to hope you hit the enemy. That's no longer the case. You can see exactly where he is, and walk your fire to exactly that spot and fire until you exactly hit them. In other words, until you hit them close enough with a killing blow, rather than merely one that might have injured them.
Artillery fire, including its effectiveness and deadliness, is nowhere near similar to what it was in WW2. It's too soon to make any definitive statements, but everything points to artillery (as used by Russia at least) is now far more deadly (again, in a literal sense) then in WW2.
There are not many medical advances to heal a shrapnel or bullet wound.
They had Sulfonamid to disinfect a wound in WW2. That wasn't any worse than Penicillin is today. And a tourniquet isn't high tech either. You can do the same thing with a shirt and a stick if you need to.
And what more are you supposed to do? A surgery in the middle of the field?
The size of the group is much more important. If they storm with 10 men into a trench and one gets hurt. Carrying that one person to safety already means to cancel the attack, because you need 4, which will cut your group in half.
Meanwhile if you are in a singular battle of 100k active soldiers, ten of those can be occupied with saving you and it would still not drastically decrease the success.
Look at the videos of Ukrainian medics trying to evacuate soldiers. This is not at all more advanced. They do nothing that you wouldn't have been able to do in WW2.
AFU soldiers abandon their wounded and nearly dead on the battlefield in order to run away from failed offensives alive. This alone accounts for the spectacular KIA numbers and the suspiciously low wounded (WIA). I believe that 50% of AFU wounded die on the battlefield because Ukrainian leadership doesn't care if they live. Ukrainian leadership only cares about diverting soldier wages and calling them deserters. This so "Ukrainian leadership" doesn't have to pay soldier families' death benefits, or acknowledge AFU command corruption and stupidity.
You are extrapolating from bad data and adding in your own confirmation bias. Just because there's video of meat wagons, doesn't mean that what you see occurs across the whole front, or even a significant part of it. There's far more video of squads (5-6 men) being bombed, and 2 or 3 of them going down. The survivors then have to choose who they can save, because dragging just one wounded to aid takes 3-4 men.
c1ue has covered the basics re US Army in WW2, but I'll point out the following...
All successful first aid is predicated on the "Golden Hour".
You just *ONE* hour to get your wounded soldier to a Field Hospital, NOT just a First Aid Post. Past that point, if they have tourniquets on limbs, those limbs are lost.
If the the bleed is not controlled, they are dead.
If the wound is to the body and there's internal bleeding, they are dead.
Ukraine simply does not have the men, materials or infrastructure that followed the US Army around in WW2. Anything within 40km of the front line is is the war zone.
Has anyone seen ANY pictures of Field Hospitals within that zone on the Ukraine side?? If they don't exist, then that just makes it that much harder for wounded to survive.
Very good points indeed.
They also strongly suggest that the ratio of killed to wounded for battlefield incidents is much, much worse for the Ukrainian side than most people believe it is, due to 'missing' this Golden Hour to get the wounded adequate help.
You missing wide use of thermobarics, from hand-held Shmels, to absolutely horrific TOS, to MLRS with special ammunitions (see, all ranges covered). Thermobarics don't leave wounded. You literally can't even count dead in epicenter afterwards. Also, there are hundreds of drone videos of UA forces leaving wounded behind.
@simplicius
Could not find a reference or source that vdLeyen admitted the 200.000-casualties number. Where did you find it?
The figure I use for KIA:WIA ratio is 1.67. This is based on a survey done by the Ukrainian International Institute of Sociology, which reported that virtually every family in Ukraine had suffered three killed and between 5 and 7 wounded. That works out to 1.67. It may not be accurate but it's the only figure we have.
Interestingly, for the Russians, whenever they have reported KIA and WIA in specific instances, it has almost always been the standard rule-of-thumb 1:3. And they claim 97% return to duty.
And for the past year of heavy Ukrainian losses, the issue has clearly been that Ukraine wounded are either dying on the field due to poor retrieval practices or die in transit to primary care. This has been reported repeatedly by medical personnel in Ukraine IIRC. The Russians have no such problems, according to reports that the minute someone gets a scratch they're rolled up and out of there and back in a rear hospital within an hour.
So I think we can believe that Ukraine's KIA to WIA ratio is almost, but not quite, 1:1. Closer to 1:2 than 1:1 but not anywhere near 1:3.
As I wrote in my Substack on these issues, if you believe the Russian MoD and do the math, Ukraine is losing 60-100,000 losses per month - and that is with conservative estimates including the 1.67 KIA:WiA ratio.
Martyanov believes Ukraine has lost around one million or more since the start. I don't vouch for that number, but it's also not impossible depending on how much unreported casualties there are, as represented by the "non-battle-damage-assessed" strikes Russia carries out every day. You have to count those, too, which no one but me does, but we have no idea how effective those actually are. Almost certainly, however, they are larger than the conservative figure of a mere two KIA and WIA that I use.
The real result shows on the field. Ukraine simply is accomplishing nothing - which means they have next to nothing left, neither men nor materiel.
Your math is wrong. 3:6 is 2, not 1.67. A 1:2 ratio gives us 400,000 dead and 800,000 wounded for 1.2 million total casualties, close to Martyanov's figure.
It's not 3:6, it's 3:5 or 3:7, from the Ukrainian poll. 5 is 1.67 times 3. I took the lower figure to be conservative. Yes, a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio - I think Martyanov uses the latter - does bring us around one million. But we don't know it's 1:2 or 1:3. The only figure we have is the Ukrainian survey. It may not be actually accurate as it only measures what happens to families which might not be identical to the battlefield, but it's all we have. But as I said, it could easily be one million. 200K is ludicrous.
This boils down to the semantics of, what do you count as a casualty? When people talk about wounded in this context, they are talking about people that are so wounded that they are a permanent casualty, they will never return to duty.
If you instead define wounded as anyone that got a papercut, you got a totally different figure. The same soldier can have been lightly wounded 7 times and still be fighting. Do we count that soldier are 0, 1 or 7 casualties?
1:1 KIA to permanently wounded is not unrealistic, especially considering how poor their medical situation is. While medical technology has advanced, Ukraines medical system is extremely strained and getting evacuated on a modern battlefields when you have a person wounded in a field with a dozen drones flying overhead correcting artillery fire is far harder than evacuating wounded in WW2.
No, it's not semantics.
A casualty, or a loss is anyone that becomes non-combat capable. It's total starting force minus current actual bayonet strength.
Which again, is entirely semantics.
Do you count a person that becomes non-combat capable for 2 hours as a casualty? 3 days? 1 month? 1 year? Where do you draw the limit?
If a single person gets wounded 7 times, requires hospital aid each time, but still returns for an eight time, is that person 0, 1 or 7 casualties?
There were several independent accounts on how RUAF handles wounded. You literally get manhandled by at least two soldiers, who cut your uniform and check the source of bleeding. If it's slightly bigger than papercut - you are sent to the rear immediately (I think you probably sent to the rear anyways, unless you want to keep fighting barechested, Conan style). It's starkly contrasts with what UA or even Wagner does - they are often keep fighting wounded.
Like it or not, but casualties are handled very differently between RU/UA in this war
"So tell me, how can you possibly claim that Ukraine, where they have all of the above, even if not in abundance, but infinitely more than the US army of 1940 ever did, has the worse survival rate?"
I'm assuming that's not a rhetorical question, so I'll answer it. Note please that I'll answer HOW it is possible, which is not the same as saying that the claims of 400k plus dead are correct. I don't know if they are, but they certainly could be true.
Your problem with the comparison with the US is that you're comparing apples and oranges. In the Ukraine nearly every wounded man who can return to service does. That was not the case for the US in WW2, far from it. Also, the number of men in the US army grew, while those in the Ukrainian forces have (after an initial increase) been steadily decreasing. These two factors have major implications for the total number of killed vs wounded.
The thing you are forgetting is that wounded men who return to the front 'join the lottery' again and run a serious risk to become killed or permanently injured this second (or third, or fourth) time around, while the reverse, the dead or permanently injured being merely wounded, can't happen! This isn't a single 'dice throw' but a continuously repeating one in which the temporarily wounded keep coming back to compete for 'the big prize'.
Now, if the overall size of the 'target population' (in statistical terms) stays the same or grows, this doesn't matter all that much, but it does in a declining population size. Sooner or later, the majority will be KIA or permanently injured, and if you go on long enough, the vast majority will be!
That's because in a declining population the ratio of inflicted dead to wounded may still be the same FOR ANY SINGLE 'DICE ROLL', but the absolute numbers are not the same between 'dice rolls'. And because wounded return to duty, and hence to the risk of being killed the second time round (or third, or fourth, etc), the ratio of dead to wounded (in a declining target population) gradually grows closer and closer to around 1:1.
Note, the 1:1 here assumes that the number of KIA and permanently injured are the same, and if you go on long enough (throw the proverbial statistical dice often enough in a declining population) then almost everyone will end up either dead or permanently injured.
If there's a greater chance of becoming KIA rather than permanently injured than it can even go further, like 1 : 0.8 (five KIA for every four permanently wounded). Also note that the number of temporarily wounded would approach zero in the end (if you throw the dice often enough) so they wouldn't even be a factor any more.
Here's a simple example:
Target population 1000
for each round, 10% chance KIA, 10% chance Perm WIA, 20% Temp WIA (overall KIA to WIA of 1:3).
Round 1: 100 KIA, 100 Perm WIA, 200 Temp WIA
Remaining Target population: 800 (the Temp WIA return to duty)
Round 2: 80 KIA, 80 Perm WIA, 160 Temp WIA
Remaining Target Population: 640
Round 3: 64 KIA, 64 Perm WIA, 128 Temp WIA
Remaining Target population: 512
So after just three rounds, nearly 50% are casualties of some kind, but at which ratio? Let's add them up:
100 + 80 + 64 = 244 KIA
100 + 80 + 64 = 244 Perm WIA
128 Temp WIA (who have yet to recover and return to duty for round 4).
Total WIA is 244 + 128 = 372 WIA
We started with a KIA to (total) WIA ration of 1:3. But now it is 244 : 372 or 1 : 1,52.
So even though the chances for getting killed vs wounded remain the same each round, because of the returning WIA's and declining numbers, the absolute ratio over all rounds combined has shifted radically.
The advances in medicine you referred to, actually make it more likely for WIA's to return to duty now, and thereby increases their chances of ultimately (after additional rounds of 'dice throwing') ending up as a KIA or permanently wounded. So somewhat ironically, those advances end up skewing the ratio towards MORE KIA's and permanently WIA's, not less.
EDIT: One important issue I forgot to point out, there is a huge difference between the number of men who ARE wounded and the number of men who HAVE BEEN wounded, as the first does not include the men who have recovered and are no longer considered to be wounded. So when people are discussing these numbers or talking about ratios, always be aware which of the two they are referring to!
In my example I used total number of men who ARE wounded, not who HAVE BEEN wounded, as the final remaining population of 512 also includes previously wounded men who have fully recovered and who have not yet become KIA or permanently WIA.
Bro, for a brief moment, I was beginning to imagine your iterative statistical analysis as a board game involving single dice throws
The advances in medicine and first aid in combat are irrelevant when there is no air evac; when soldiers are walking 4-5 km on foot to the front lines - hence have to bring back casualties the same distance on foot; when lightly wounded soldiers are sent back into combat repeatedly; and when the Ukrainian hospital system is overloaded (by their own admission) at frequent and regular intervals.
The US army in WW2 is a terrible example because they were attacking a largely already defeated and significantly second rate part of the German army, had air superiority if not air supremacy, and also was not facing an opponent with significantly higher artillery capabilities than their own.
That's true for the offensive, but not the war in general. We see plenty of cases of Ukraine hauling off their wounded, and even dead, in medevac M113s
So??
That is a meaningless observation.
What about all the cases where we DON'T see medevac or recovery of the dead??
Because it is CERTAIN that we don't have video of everyone on the battlefield...
You are extrapolating from a single data point, it doesn't work.
Since we seem to be comparing to WW2, look up the story where a mathematician was asked to look at battle damaged planes, and come up with a better armour scheme.
His suggestion?
Put more armour where the returned planes have no bullet holes.
Why there?
Because planes that get hit there are obviously not coming back.
You are looking at returned planes, and ignoring the ones that got shot down.
Glad to see someone made the 'survivor bias' argument, as it seems to run rampant when it comes to this topic.
Survivorship bias would occur if you only looked at AFU bodycam footage (obviously if then you would only see footage from AFU who manages to make it out alive). Also, "survivorship bias" applies the other way around, too. For every medevac mission you see filmed, there are many more that don't get filmed or published.
I'm trained and have worked as a QA engineer, I'm not ignorant to sampling, statistics, indicators.
But if you claim the AFU manages to save only half the amount of wounded as compared to a WW2 army, despite clearly having more modern and effective capabilities, in whatever quantities, you better have undeniable, irrefutable evidence of such outrageous claim, not just "Oh yeah, they totally have no medical supplies and need to walk 20 kilometers on to get to a medic. It's so much worse for them than WW2, trust me bro". (I doubt they lack medical supplies, because we hear nothing about how "Ukraine needs disinfectant/sterile gauze/tourniquets to win the offensive", and during an offensive, WW2 troops had to walk the wounded back on foot too")
I'm saying that coordinated medevac during an assault didn't exist in WW2. You couldn't just call in a medevac unit, because they didn't know where you were, and probably you didn't even know exactly where you were.
Survivorship bias doesn't matter in this instance. I don't even know how it would apply. The fact that we see medevac happen regularly (whether it's from a Russian observation drones, or via an AFU bodycam) indicates that they coordinate the evacuation of the wounded and dead regularly, a capability that simply didn't exist for WW2 infantry. Sure, if you had a jeep you could haul the wounded back, but there was no way to call the evac teams to you.
But arguing about what-aboutism and things we don't know is pointless. Let's rely on raw numbers, here's another calculation you can simply do:
We know that Ukraine had 60-80k NATO trained troops saved up for this offensive. Let's assume they managed to train up another 60-80k, while undertaking offensive operations (which is unlikely, because it took them all spring to train up this many, so I doubt they can train the same amount in the same time frame during the offensive). But let's assume they doubled that with fresh draftees, 120-160k total troops to throw as meat at the Russians. Their meat assaults are still underway, so that means they are yet not nearly out of reserves, they may have 10-20k more. So their maximum casualty figures for this 3,5 months of fighting at most can be around 110-140k-ish. If we assume an extremely steep 1:1 KIA ratio, like Bebo did, that gives us 50-70k dead over 3.5 months of fighting. The war started 19 months ago. So if we extrapolate their current level of attrition (20k KIA a month) from a period where they are literally sending human waves out into the open to be mowed down by Russian defenders, and assume they were taking that amount of damage during the entirety of this conflict, we would get around 380k KIAs for the totality of the war. Except of course for most of the time, they weren't running out into the open to be gunned down, they were hiding, and Russia needed to dig them out trench by trench, pillbox by pillbox, house by house with artillery and drones (back then they didn't even have UMPCs en masse, and Ukrainie had a much more threatening AD presence, as well as much larger percentage of trained professional soldiers as opposed to the mostly fresh draftees they have now).
Anything near or over the "400k dead" number is simply ludicrous.
I still disagree.
The situation isn't bad everywhere, but it is bad wherever it really matters i.e. the lost fight for Artemovsk, this latest summer counteroffensive, even during last year's "successful" counteroffensive.
So if you are Ukrainian and wounded in Kherson, you might be ok unless you were one of the suckers trying to get a foodhold on the East Bank of the Dnieper, or one of the guys grandstanding on an abandoned oil well, or trying to attack the Zaporozhia nuclear power plant, etc etc. Avdiivka also - relatively not that many casualties.
But overall - I very strongly suspect that medical care for wounded Ukrainian soldiers, overall, is very poor by WW2 standards if perhaps not as bad as WW1, almost pre-penicillin levels.
Perhaps you should spend more time following various Telegram channels that show battlefield videos.
The Ukies are literally meat assault. They get hit by everything Since they're on foot. Modern warfare is gruesome as artillery shell flattens a whole squad. Suicide drones follow retreating soldiers. And these soldiers are on foot. Even evac APCs do a shit work with drivers worried they'll be next casualties. You'll see these on Telegram. So the Ukie wounded don't get send back from the battlefield. They die there from their wounds.
I think you can’t compare Ukraine with 1945 US annd expect Ukraine to have a better rate for several reasons.
1 - US was an absolute economic behemoth in 1940s. It was even bigger than nowadays China.
This means that it’s economical resources where several orders of magnitude above today Ukraine.
US could mobilise a enormous number of doctors, nurses, and in general take care of wounded.
Ukraine is a barely survival country, break and all the money it receives means weapons, not medical transports or doctors/nurses in the front.
2 - US land troops fought an already defeated enemy, Nazi Germany, whose better troops were fighting in the East and whose industrial resources were bombed by the American/British airforce during years.
The correct comparison would be Ukraine ratio with Germany ratio.
3 - US in 1945 cares about it soldiers, it didn’t send them to suicidal missions. Indeed even Germany cared about its soldiers.
Ukraine is ruled by fanatic psychopaths that care about their soldiers the same than Al Qaeda or ISIS.
4 - Nowadays medicine is no better in the sense you point. Antibiotics already existed. And while operations in hospitals and diagnostics has increased a lot, there is nothing particularly better that can be used in mass numbers. Mobile operations like FIV need to be provided.
4 - This war in Ukranian side looks almost like 19century.
Compare the trenches in the IWW, of concrete, clean, with clear exits and rooms for doctors with the mud trenches of Ukraine where the wounded are in contact with water and all kind of dirtiness.
Personally I don’t see any sense in being prudent with Ukrainian loses.
People like to be too conservative but we should only analyse facts.
They are fighting an enemy that is superior in artillery, that is very superior in air support, they are using crazy tactics and attacking pointless for PR wins.
They are absolutely delusional and cold to their life
They have the cover of the most powerful media machine in history, a machine that we know lie without shame.
All people making mathematical models of any kind point to the 400k. The number of tombs, the extrapolation with captured in combat, the words from Ukranian prisioners, the number of mobilisation.
What more is needed? 400k death is a horrific number, but it where all analysis points
UAF casualties are the absolute key metric in this conflcit and I have concluded that they are impossible to assess with any degree of accuracy except that they are really bad. As in really bad there will be a collapse sooner or later. How close in elapsed time that is is hard to say. Both sides lie and obfuscate, and for good reason.
RF losses have been a fraction of those of the UAF and Russia has a mobilisable population 4X to 5X that of Ukraine.
Firepower is king. And the Russians have the guns, the shells, the missiles, the aircraft and the bombs. And the poor saps in the UAF are advancing on foot against fortified positions covered by obstacles and mines, with limited air and fire support.
I feel sorry for them.
However this is not a one sided shooting match and Russian losses will not I think be the 1/7 or 1/10 those of the UAF. Maybe 1/3 to 1/4.
Take into account that these meat assaults don't end with access to the wounded in many cases, thus they bleed out
You're assuming that they can even get medical care in all of these engagements. If you look at the "must watch video" in this post, you'll see at least one context where this would not be expected...bodies littered everywhere, and the soldier saying very clearly that they cannot collect the dead nor evacuate the injured so they die on the battlefield of otherwise treatable injuries. I'm not saying that this is always the case, obviously there are many cases where the injured are evacuated, medical care is administered, and the streets of western Ukraine become populated with veterans missing various limbs and suffering trauma that will last a lifetime.
Well, to save a wounded soldier you have to treat them at the front, then evacuate them and then get them to a hospital or such.
Ukraine has given their soldiers no training beyond, "you should put a tourniquet on it"
They dont seem to evacuate very well, when they do theres no vehicle, or it gets blown up too and i seriously question ukrainian healthcare for its troops after watching videos here.
So i dont doubt a lot of savable wounded die
Interestingly, Zelensky acting more and more extreme and unhinged gives away the severity of his situation. Quite a far cry from the man of 2022
Or gives away the severity of his cocaine addiction.
Great article!
Good report. Lots of interesting stuff.
"That’s why I stand by my reporting of Russia only using 70-80k men in the opening stages of the SMO, and not much more than that even by the time of the first year anniversary."
At one point last year, Lavrov quoted a figure of 100-120K troops - and I believe he was not including the Donbass militias, although he may have been including the Rosqvardia, the Volunteer Battalions, the Chechens and Wagner, who knows. So that's the figure I've assumed since then. I consider 70-80K to be unlikely due to being low, but again who knows - no one but the Russian General Staff. And it's mostly irrelevant anyway - except for the below issue.
The other figure I always dispute is that Russia was "out-numbered 3 to 1" at the outset of the war. Since Ukraine only had 250,000 troops in the field and only half of them at the contact line, I fail to see how Russia's 100K - give or take 20K - could be "outnumbered 3 to 1" (not to mention the Donbass militias who numbered anywhere from 25-50,000 depending on another "who knows" figure). Maybe later when Ukraine mobilized its 400K reserves, but not during the first couple weeks. But it's become the standard view that Russia was heavily outnumbered. People forget that troops scattered all over Ukraine don't actually count except in logistic matters until they reach the front.
If Ukraine had that many troops, why did they have such a hard time with the 40K Russians that came down from Belarus? It probably took Ukraine weeks to get those Territorials and reserves mobilized.
I find all this bean-counting of bodies to be a waste of time. What matters is performance on the field and that depends on strategy and operations. Speaking of which, you might find this article of interest that I ran across the other day on the NATO Defense College site:
Defining the “Special Military Operation”
https://www.ndc.nato.int/research/research.php?icode=777
If this “sampling of Ukrainian vs. Russian populations in the street” is true; it is really sad!
Sadly even the reporter is a Ukrainian who now lives in Russia because she couldn't take it anymore.
This was one of the most egregious brain-washing operation! It is so terrible - Slavic people against Slavic people!
Equally sadly, it will be easily dismissed as selection bias (you only showed war mongering Ukrainians and Peacenik Russians, the rest you edited out)
The reality is that only the "war mongering", the brainwashed, the hate filled and those without means to leave have stayed in Kiev (plus your usual large chunk of those who just want to get by, or can't believe reality). The rest have fled West or East, as their choices have taken them.
As wounded rates are always at least 3X higher than KIA, if KIA is 400,000, which I believe is correct, then WIA must be at least 1.2 million. That leaves us with 1.6 million total casualties. Keep in mind that they are sending most of the wounded back to the front.
"As wounded rates are always at least 3X higher than KIA"
That's incorrect. See my reply above (in the response thread to the first post) for a more elaborate explanation:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-92023-friction-and-turmoil/comment/40377280
In a given battlefield incident the ratio of KIA to WIA is usually around 1 : 3, but you cannot then extrapolate that to the conflict as a whole, because most Ukrainian wounded return to the front after some time for a new opportunity to be killed. The longer this goes on the more it skews the ratio towards fewer WIA per KIA. By now it has almost certainly dropped below 1 : 2 (for total loss figures), and I strongly suspect it has already dropped below 1 : 1,5.
Moldava and Armenia have been on the flip list of the West since way back, seems it is about to happen. It gets to the point where you wonder if the West just thinks "Fuck it" Just declare war and get it over with.
Don't worry about Moldova :) Outside powers have been trying to "flip" it for over a century, with hilarious results (Moldovans are the second-most stubborn people in Europe after the gypsies).
👍😆
I have never understood why everyone doesn't roll about laughing every time Zelensky says they are fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy.
But not only does no one laugh but no one comments on it afterwards. Not even in places like this where I'd expect some derisive comment perhaps, or better, some dry as dust precise dissection of the facts to demonstrate what a ludicrous contention it is.
But nothing. Why?
And he says 'where will Putin stop?' Like Putin is a rabid invader sweeping through the land. Does he not understand the invader in Ukraine is Kiev, which is invading Donbas? And Putin/Russia has invaded nothing/nowhere (barring that initial farcical thing) but is everywhere behind the lines, the borders of States that not only welcome them but are now Federated with them?
Does he not understand that the Russians after their initial 'invasion' quickly retreated behind lines that had been establish in 2014 by Kiev's invasion ?
Of course he knows.
Everyone knows.
Just as they know of Russia's peace proposals Kiev twice rejected.
So what is he talking about? Is he lunatic or just a consummate liar/actor?
What is going on?
"So what is he talking about? Is he lunatic or just a consummate liar/actor?"
Think for a second. ALL actors are necessarily liars, else they would not be on the stage. What are you doing when you are playing a role, especially one contrary to your personality? You are engaging in a massive lie, a charade on the level of a con artist adopting a completely new persona. What are you doing when you are reciting your lines? In many cases, you are lying because you are saying things that you don't even believe in yourself. Therefore it is trivial for any actor to be the consummate lying politician. This is why I say never elect an actor as president. Never elect a businessman either, but that's another matter.
As you can see, as far as Zelensky is concerned, the very *idea* of the truth is meaningless. He's just playing a role, no matter what he does, and truth is irrelevant to stagecraft. In fact, it's antithetical to it. When he speaks, he's just "saying his lines" as if he were in a movie. Of course an actor's lines have nothing to with the truth and are often antithetical to it.
An actor's entire life is a gigantic lie. Everything he does is a role. Everything he says is a line. In addition to the fact that pathological narcissism is a job requirement, is it any wonder that their relationships are so short-lived, many, and chaotic? Marry an actor and you marry a fraud and a pathological liar. When two actors marry, you are literally SPLITTING A TWO-SIDED ATOM of fraud and pathological dishonesty. Kaboom!
Yep. I can see that much of course. My point is why lack of reaction from us? Any of us? Especially, mainly, with a view to informing those millions that apparently BELIEVE him?
And docilely allow their governments to ruin their nations and promote the deaths of thousands of dumb fools...
Yep. I wrote as though I mainly wondered about him.
But what I meant was really I wonder about us.
I didn't write it right.
:)
Hey, propaganda works! 24-7 full spectrum propaganda works. The people I talk to simply refuse to listen to any facts from our side. They dismiss all of them as Russian disinformation. Most of our info comes from the Russians, which is all dismissed, and a lot also comes from pro-Russian voices on the web, which is also all dismissed. It's really a circular argument. How do we know the argument is fake? Because Russians or pro-Russians say it. But all of the info on our side is necessarily from Russians or pro-Russians, so all of our info will always be fake.
The people I know, you can't even mention the word "Russia" in front of them. It's similar with China. Americans just swallow all of the patriotard propaganda 100%. I point this out to these people and they say they often go against US foreign policy, but then you hardly ever find a case where they do. And when they do they are very quiet and almost ashamed about it.
Really it's just partiotardism. You can oppose US domestic policy because it's one side or the other pushing it. You can oppose Republicans without hating America. But US foreign policy is supported full hilt by both parties all the way with little if any opposition. If you oppose US foreign policy, that means you HATE AMERICA. If you oppose the Pentagon then you hate America (especially true with veterans). If you oppose the CIA and FBI then you hate America! Democrats now are much more supportive of US foreign policy, the Pentagon, CIA and FBI than Republicans are, which is a 180 degree shift.
The Vietnam War generation liberals who opposed US foreign policy, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI are dead and gone or they all changed and went full patriotard.
Seriously, if you oppose US foreign policy, then you are saying "America is a bad country." Foreign policy is equated to the nation itself. Opposing US foreign policy is saying fuck the US and burning the flag. You can't oppose US foreign policy without concluding that we suck as a country, and no partiotard will admit to that. And the overwhelming majority of Americans, including almost all liberals and progressives, are full blown patriotards! The only anti-patriotards now are on the Right!
You oppose US foreign policy and almost every liberal and progressive will tell you, "America, love it or leave it." "If you don't like it here, then leave!" I hear this all the time from liberal Democrats. Remember when it was rightwingers who said that during the Vietnam War? Liberals and conservatives have traded places.
There's also a lot of peer pressure. Right now everyone for Russia is being openly called a traitor. There are demands to have Congressional hearings into Musk and others for treason! We aren't even at war with Russia but everyone treats it like we are. You go against US foreign policy and your name is mud everywhere you go, no exceptions. Most people are cowards and just go along with the crowd.
Yes I know what you mean. This is a very widespread, very common thing. Been going on forever.
What it is is the tyranny of the braindead. And that includes those that can't think, those that won't think, those that are cunningly thinking and are tricking everyone all the time and so on.
Overall they are not worth talking to. It's largely a waste of time.
Overall they simply are stupid: either by accident or design.
So don't talk to them.
But outsmart them.
And if you can't outsmart them then who's the stupid one?
You don't talk to them.
You plant 'memes' or slogans or thoughts or something in them and then leave them to it.
Like you may slap the guy on the back and say: 'Gotta support Ukraine, Jimmy, don't we - full on, absolutely, full on wholehearted support for Donbas Ukrainians is what I say, right Jim?" and then peel off and go away.
Don't get into a conversation with him. You do NOT talk to them IS the point.
Or maybe something after the style of: 'Every bastard in Ukraine standing on land he wasn't invited onto by the owner should be shot, right Jimmy?'
Or maybe 'Nothing wrong with having Stefan Bandera for a hero, is there, Jim? What? He never killed many - maybe 50,000 Poles is all - well that's not so much. We killed more Iraqis than that and we weren't even helping the Nazis, eh?'
And so on. See?
And all those idiots have people all around them. Wives, husbands, friends, children, workmates and so many of whom know those idiots to be idiots but say nothing.
Planting things with the idiot within earshot of them can have beneficial effects you know little of. Even out of earshot for the idiot will possibly repeat it: 'You know what this crazy guy said to me today...?"
And not just memes and such.
Simple statements: 'That Simplicius guy on substack seems to know a thing or two'
Anything that opens doors, that plants seeds.
It's all there. It's an attitude. A mindset. Thinking you're beat before you start and by a pack of idiots is no way to proceed.
postscript: I came back to add this: You have to forego the satisfaction of face to face debate/discussion and making your point.
That satisfaction is not available to you and that's not what we're playing for. We're playing for much larger stakes.
I must tell you that this damned propaganda works so great that when I expose myself to it for a while, I start to doubt myself and wonder if the Ukrainians are really the good guys after all. Of course, everything I've been told says that's not so, but this just goes to show you the power of 24-7 full spectrum propaganda on blast. Anyone else experience this creepy feeling?
On the other hand, I have an extremely open mind such that I am ready to chuck just about any non-personal belief system, especially political or sociological, in a heartbeat. I always read the other side to see what they're saying. It's actually rather painful and I think most just won't do it. But I don't want to be believing anything that's not true in worldly affairs. I imagine most people could care less whether what they believe is true or not. If it makes them feel good, it's true. If not, it's false.
That's why I ended up partly on the left and partly on right. Of course, I am a man of the Left, but that's only because I'm convinced after decades of study that we are right. And all those conclusions of decades of thinking are up for grabs too! However, on a few things lately we on the Left have just gone too far and we're not even correct anymore. In a word, we are spouting falsehoods. Well, I'm not down with that! If the Right is correct on any issue out there, I will go with them on it.
I advise everyone here to do this if you have the guts and can take it. Always be throwing your worldly beliefs up against the wall to reality test them against the opposition. Everything worldly you believe should be up for grabs. It's difficult, but it also leads you on these endless "searches for the ultimate truth" behind everything controversial, and those are rather fun expeditions, at least for me. Sort of like going to the Brain Gym for a workout.
Why on Earth should I believe things that are not true? Outside of one's personal life, I don't get it. But I'm also trained as a journalist and that's supposed to be our game: the truth.
Yep. Good for you. You know what weighs heavily with me for deciding who is 'good' and who is 'bad' in this particular example of human cupidity and stupidity?
It's like what Viktor Orban said: the job of a politician is to protect his people. Well quite simply Kiev and Washington are protecting no one.
They are trying to protect govt. control, authority, despotism and they don't care if all the people die during the course of their 'protection' if at the end of they can look at the land and declare it is theirs, that their govt. control, their reach, their mandate, their power, covers it all.
THAT's what they are about and if that's not as clear as a bright summer day I don't know what ever could be.
Yeah, politicians are consumnate actors.
I suppose you are correct if you mean they have to lie and be phony all the time else they're done.
When you elect an actor as a politician though, I'm afraid you are getting the worst of both worlds.
Two can play that game. If we don't stop the United States in Iraq, they'll keep making war on Syria and Iran....
oh wait.
"I have never understood why everyone doesn't roll about laughing every time Zelensky says they are fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy."
Same reason why everyone didn't roll about laughing every time a US president said they were fighting to keep the planet safe for democracy. When the village idiot holds a live grenade, it's better for your own health not to laugh at them (openly) as you may inadvertently draw his attention, and ire. Grenades are dangerous, and village idiots are unpredictable.
Because we're all just soooooo fed up with that kokhol. Maybe.
The Russo-Ukrainian war is about many things -- land, resources, geopolitics, and so on. However, it's also a clash of ideologies, with Ukraine representing multicultural liberal democracy, and Russia representing the authoritarian traditionalist ethnostate (while Russia has significant minorities, I'd argue it's still an ethnostate, analogous to Israel); or in Duginist terms, the "open society" vs the "closed society".
So, when the slava ukraini crowd goes on about "defending democracy" and "fighting fascism", this is actually what they mean. Of course, liberalism has become decadent and oppressive, while the authoritarian regimes are in many ways healthier, but you have to be red-pilled to understand that. The believers in Western ideology have become detached from reality, as seen in their credulity in the fantasy narrative of Ukrainian victory and the supposed Russian evil/patheticness.
Liberalism has had a long winning streak, but I believe it will soon come to an end, in either Cold War II or WWIII (depending on how far this escalates); it'll be a massive shock for the West, but I believe it's justified at this point. Z
"According to the people's deputy, Zelensky will be given weapons and will stop insisting on the mandatory elections next year in exchange for total mobilization and sending everyone to the front - from women and teenagers to the disabled and the elderly."
That's one of the saddest things I've read recently. It doesn't even make me feel angry, though there is a bit of that. It's just SAD as Hell, man. SAD.
Of course I'm for Russia and I completely hate these Nazis, but in general I refuse to watch most of the war footage, even drone footage of material being hit because I know there are humans near that material. I can't watch anything that shows Ukrainian troops dying or their dead bodies. I just can't handle it. They're human beings, whatever their ideology is, and God knows even WHAT their ideology is at this point.
Keep in mind that a majority of Americans, I think 58%, oppose further military aid to Ukraine. But boy you sure never hear one word about that in the media, do you?
Because nobody of influence and authority cares a fig for public opinion except when it provides a convenient pretext to do what the elites already want to do.
Yeah, but then how do you explain both parties still allocating said aid? The MSM explains it as serving their base, but I think that base is actually the MIC.
Both parties and the MSM go along with the Deep State or the National Security State (the foreign policy establishment of the US) all the way. They don't care what the population thinks. The Deep State wants this war so both parties are for it and so is the entire MSM. The foreign policy establishment of the US or the Deep State are the people who actually run this country!
Hi Robert,
you write that you think that 58% of Americans oppose further military aid to Ukraine. But in another post:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-92023-friction-and-turmoil/comment/40422403
you write:
"And the overwhelming majority of Americans, including almost all liberals and progressives, are full blown patriotards!" (with patriotards referring to people who support US foreign policy no matter what).
The two appear to be a contradiction. I don't mean this as a personal criticism towards you, because both statements appear to be more or less correct to me too, yet put together they do form a contradiction. Which suggests that a majority of Americans have contradictory opinions in their head on this subject. I was wondering what your ideas on this are, as you posted both statements, and appear to have a first person experience of the American mindset that I, from across the big pond, lack.
It's not contradictory at all. People turn on US foreign policy at some point. They wanted us to leave Iraq and Afghanistan after a while. Even the patriotards were for that but they both supported both of those wars to the hilt. Patriotards tire of wars after years, but they still supported them in the first place. The Democrat patriotards I know who were against the war (quietly) from the start also never wanted to leave and justified our staying even after the Iraqi Legislature had ordered us to leave.
Well, now you can be a patriotard and still oppose more aid to Ukraine. The patriotards are supporting the Nazis in their war against Russia. The anti-patriotard and "America-hating" position is to be pro-Russia! That's the "treasonous" position. They continue to support Ukraine and they really hate Russia, but they've turned on aid for Ukraine, although you never hear anyone talk like that in the media because it's 100% voices in favor of more military aid to Ukraine. So the position of literally the majority of Americans has no voice.
And for sure the liberals and progressives are still wildly pro-Ukraine. These are the people I listen to every day. KPFK for instance, Pacifica, the most leftwing station on the dial, and Daily Kos, ground zero for the left wing or base of the Democratic Party continue to be almost fanatically pro-Nazi.
The people I talk to every day are diehard patriotards, liberal to moderate Democrats. They will almost never oppose anything that US foreign policy does, perhaps especially now that a Democrat is in. But then they were the same way under Trump too, even though they hated him, as his foreign policy was still sacrosanct. That's what got me thinking why foreign policy seems immune to the two party split in US politics, and I concluded that opposing US foreign policy must be seen as treason by most people, certainly by most liberals anymore.
What's it like over there wrt British foreign policy?
I'm not British, but reside in one of the European nations that has no foreign policy of its own worthy of the name. Firstly, it is all about being a good lapdog to American international interests and secondly, to let unelected EU technocrats tell us what our foreign policy ought to be, which 'we' then pretty much follow unquestioningly.
The only times when it gets a little bit interesting is when the interests of our American overlords clash with those of our EU masters. It never last long as the latter nearly always fold, and usually rather quickly too. Presumably once they've been sufficiently bribed to change their tune.
Generally speaking. most of the public here, as in the rest of northern and north-western Europe considers themselves to be morally superior to the rest of the world, including the US, although few will be entirely conscious of their own mindset. It's more akin to a religious belief rather than coherent thought or a well reasoned argument. And if someone is remotely aware of it, they justify it by arguing to oneself that we mean well for everyone, and that if everyone would just do what we tell them to do, we'd all be better off. As a whole, we're rather arrogant.
They assume that as a consequence of our moral superiority, which is unquestionable, much like religious dogma, their opinions on how the world is and on how it ought to be are also morally superior, and pretty much infallible. For example, they really believe that Russia will lose for no other reason than that 'we are good and they are bad, so they will lose to us'. They see it as a moral imperative so are convinced it will happen.
It's fascinating really as it almost completely divorces (desired) outcomes from real actions that need to be taken for those outcomes to come true. Why make an effort to achieve a certain outcome if you are convinced it will come to pass anyway? They genuinely believe for example that electricity used to power factories is bad (for the environment) and that at the same time electricity used to power electric cars is harmless. To them, something is real, or will be real, just because they believe in it hard enough. Objective reality is more and more ignored and seen as a nuisance disturbing the dream.
This sense of deep-seated moral superiority is primarily based on the view that our northern and north-western European countries have societies that are organised on vastly superior principles, and one could even say that many people believe them to be the ultimately best possible way to organise a society (and these countries constantly bicker between themselves on the details).
Societies which are organised or based along different principles are not only looked down upon, but that condescending view is (mostly subconsciously) then extended to the people living in those societies (along the lines of: "if they were as smart or morally advanced as we are, they would have the same kinds of societies as we do, but they don't, so they can't be as smart or morally advanced as we are, which proves that we are superior to them").
It's all getting rather delusional over here I must say.
Aurelien has been writing extensively on the different aspect of this delusional world view that is so prevalent in the West (and he writes from a mostly European perspective, French in particular):
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/
This sort of mindset is very similar to the mindset of the patriotards I talk to. Keep in mind that they are liberal Democrats for the most part! Most Americans literally think the US is the greatest country in the world. I asked an America-hating Leftist once about this and he also insisted that we are the greatest country in the world. This translates into extreme arrogance about the superiority of our military and its ability to destroy any opponent without much problem at all.
Keep in mind that the liberal Democrats I talked to fully justified sending CLUSTER BOMBS to Ukraine. It was amazing because there were actual a few liberal Democrat dissidents on this question who opposed this, some even saying it was evil.
I wrote the latter without thinking of the former. That's the truth of it.
Some of those foreign volunteers come across as mind numbingly naive. You'd think they would do a little homework before fighting for the murderous, authoritarian regime in Kiev, or perhaps most accurately DC's puppets in Kiev.
They are in the most part ex "War on Terror" soldiers or Walter Mitty's meaning that they have no idea what the whole scenario we trained for in BAOR (and NATO) in Germany trained for and expected. Full on, all out meat grinder warfare where within 72 hours NATO expected massive chemical attacks and theatre nuclear exchanges.
A lot were making money off Youtube postings as Rambo's against the Soviet Hordes and basically Fuck em...You got what you deserved. Who the fuck runs to a war that has nothing directly affecting you or your country.
I second you on that wholeheartedly.
Those British mercs must be SAS forces if they're being targeted by Russians. I'm not sure what 'vile volunteers' that guy was referring to but funny enough he wasn't blaming Russians.
Seems like Wagner and MoD still need to sort out the wrinkles between them but is anyone surprised how the whole Prigozhyn saga went stone cold and nobody talks anymore about who killed him? As if everyone knows, accepts and approves...Is Surovikin taking over Wagner in Africa?
The military recruitment ads were pretty interesting..at least we're getting some information out of Russian MoD :)
The best reaction in the last civilian opinion was the Russian guy who said its bad because they're our future cities 😀
"I'm not sure what 'vile volunteers' that guy was referring to"
He was carefully avoiding naming the neo-nazi scum that infests the foreign contingent as much, or even more, as it does the Ukrainian armed forces.
The video is saying they are being killed by other mercs? Do we have any evidence who is killing these guys? Is it pro-Russians behind the scenes or is it their fellow mercs?
If Russian KIA's had been anywhere near that level that the West likes to throw out, then it would be all over the net. Even the Russian ability to suppress negative information is limited, it's not the NKVD and Pravda times anymore.
Thank you SOOO much for the videos. This line ''British mercenaries are fleeing Ukraine because they are terrified for their lives due to the recent uptick in mercenaries being extrajudicially killed, or rather assassinated by their own people" brought such JOY to my heart. THANK YOU!!!
I'd rather have them all killed than flee, but I get your point.
yes I agree. Bayonet in the anus.
LOL, I like your imagination.
Thank you for yet another superbly comprehensive analysis.
A couple of comments:
1) Croatia has now also joined the banning of Ukrainian grain. Romania, meanwhile, has tentatively decided to do it as well but only due to extreme domestic political pressure (i.e. the US-puppet gov't is purely in favor of unlimited grain imports from Ukraine, but the populace is opposed).
2) Don't forget both Poland and Slovakia are going to have really consequential general elections soon, so a lot of the grandstanding going on is related to that.
3) Brazil's president also canceled a 1-on-1 with Zelensky in New York due to Zelensky acting like an ass, as usual.
4) The whole Artsakh situation is incredibly complex and difficult to understand precisely because there is a seemingly incomprehensible desire on the part of Yerevan to ditch Stepanakert once and for all despite the fact that they're all ethnic Armenians, members of the Armenian church, speak the same language, etc. Armenia is always a bit weird as well because more Armenians live abroad than in Armenia (and Artstakh) itself.
5) At this point, I believe that >50% of all the munitions being produced on the planet right now are in the Korean peninsula (both North and South combined), which is... NOT GOOD (for world peace).
6) A friend of mine from Western Europe just got back from Kiev (just went to visit a good friend), and the stories he told me were beyond surreal - just think "Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe.
There is a SERIOUSLY large number of people in Kiev who are now very, very rich and living it up to the max, with long lines at trendy restaurants and upscale grocery stores with hugely inflated prices, and the more expensive, the longer the line (because it's cool/trendy/upscale). Luxury cars are on every street. Everyone ignores the air raid sirens and anyway, they're turned off on the weekends to "let people sleep." In short, from Kiev (the city's) POV, it's "LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL."
My buddy asked his (Ukrainian local) friend to take him somewhere to get a photo of some bomb or missile damage or some other kind of photographic "souvenir" of the war, and it was a hard task to fulfill. Eventually, my buddy got taken to an apartment building with obviously missile damage, and the Ukrainian friend openly admitted it was caused by an errant Ukrainian AD missile, not a Russian one. In other words, my friend couldn't find even a single Russian-damaged building to photograph in all of Kiev.
If you're in Kiev, it truly DOES appear like Ukraine is kicking Russia's ass, and life is good. Literally everyone remaining has a pipeline to foreign money, whether it's directly via corruption/nepotism or via channels like foreign NGOs (which are FLUSH with money), the UN, or online jobs where you can charge triple because you're Ukrainian (and thus hiring you is "helping the war effort" and something you can brag about on your corporate webpage). But the whole thing has a ghastly danse macabre feel to it.
No surprise then at all that Kiev residents think bombing Russian cities is a jolly affair.
That is fucked up in the extreme. It is such a bizarre situation.
This is also why you should view *any* news from Poland in light of the bitterly contested upcoming election. Slovakia, i don't know so well, but I know Poland very well.
Do you know, during the worst hyper-inflationary periods in the Weimar republic, the same phenomenon occured, the lavish spending, expensive restaurants filled to the brim, etc. It was because everyone knew that by the next day the money they had would be worthless in all likelihood.
It's obviously not exactly the same situation, but I wonder if it isn't closely related. Perhaps they feel, esp. after the utter catastrophe of the counteroink, that doom and death is just arm's length away one way or another, and they should live it up while the can.