They can try and spin it that way, but who actually cares? Anyone who might be swayed by the Kremlin probably isn't worth a jot anyway.
On a purely tactical level, creating greater strain on Russian resources would acceralate the effect of various sanctions, and hopefully force them to divert resources from the war towards their domestic situation.
This is not good news if its the dam.
Hopefully it's some ammo dump.
Russia will not attack the UK. End of story.
@grumpyperson "Stop the war and use diplomacy."
'Diplomacy' is not a magic word that solves things effortlessly. What do you mean by diplomacy? Talks? About what? You need to explain what they are going to talk about.
Russian occupation authorities halted civilian traffic across the Dnipro river in Kherson
that dam is looking dicy
Ukraine systematically hits targets inside Russia = Russia is "being invaded by NATO/US"
That's how it would be spun, and would be a huge propaganda boost for the Kremlin. It would turn an unnecessary "operation" into a necessary war for them overnight.
I have a suspicion that, due to greater Ukrainian knowledge of Russian deployments thanks to inteligence assistance from the west, they have no shortage of military targets to hit. Also, they may still have to use ammunition carefully. In such a scenario it's better to use the ammunition on a target that can hurt them rather than one that can't, and rather than one that might lose them some of the international goodwill that they've built up since February.
The Russian picture of the Ukrainian deployments is likely to be much less reliable, which may be one reason why Russia is targeting civilian infrastructure so much - because they know for sure where those targets are.
I don't quite understand the reasoning for not giving the Ukrainians the capacity to effectively target Russian infrastructure in kind. Bringing the war to their soil, imposing cost on the population and disruption of everyday life is an essential aspect of winning a conflict. Why should Russian be given free reign to leave Ukrainian infrastructure in ruins without suffering the same? See how the Muscovites enjoy a winter without power.
Pskov's Labours Lost, as Shakespeare might have put it.
(I'll get my coat...)
So what modern conflict (apart from Iraq/Afghanistan) has a 10:1 or 17:1 ratio?
...
I have seen video evidence that some are - those fortunate enough to be captured by Ukrainian forces after being left to die by their fellow Orcs.
I do think you are right about the spring, particularly if there is no spectacular successes by UKR in the meantime like liberation of Kherson and Mauripol. Lets hope the russian fascist state doesnt get time to rebuild for a spring offensive and they eat themselves from within instead.
I am surprised this seems to hardly have raised an eyebrow. Ukrainian special ops blew up 4 helicopters at a millitary airbase in Pskov - 839 km from Kyiv, deep inside Russian territory.
This and other incidents likely prompted this assessment:
Nov 1, 2022 - Press ISW
Effective Ukrainian partisan attacks are forcing the Kremlin to divert resources away from frontline operations to help secure rear areas, degrading Russia’s ability to defend against ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensives, let alone conduct their own offensive operations.
russian and modern in the same breath is one hell of an oxymoron :)
The problem, you are dealing with a dog in the manger attitude, or rather dogs in the Kremlin. When they can't have Ukraine, they deny everyone else. That's why the nuclear weapons question keeps coming up. Even if the Ukrainians can militarily force the Russians back to the positions on February 23rd, that's not the end of it, for that to happen the Kremlin has to fall or the Ukrainians will not be able to rebuild, the Russian security apparatus will lick their wounds, apply lessons, re-establish control and come back again.
The demand is "The Russians need to withdraw from Ukraine". If that happens today what then? There is no line of sight to an off ramp for the Kremlin (by that I mean the Silioviki). There is no evidence that the Russian population is going to turn on them bar a significant military defeat whereby the security state loses the will to power, therefore as long as the military have access to resources they will keep going. Who is going to march on Moscow?
At present the Russians are destroying the electrical and water infrastructure across Ukraine. Limiting electricity makes it harder to move trains and soldiers and it also limits military intelligence gathering, fuel and food distribution (Diesel supply is constrained). The Russians are laying the ground work (from their point of view) for an attack on a NATO country infrastructure (specifically Britain). Their current actions on the ground are establish lines they can hold over Winter and use the time to train up the reinforcements before launching a major attack in the Spring. For that to succeed they somehow need to stymie NATOs intelligence gathering to give themselves time to establish control of the battle space.
The Spring fighting will be bloody and if it fails the Siloviki will turn on each other, indications are they are already at each other throats. If however, it succeeds NATO countries will marshall their forces and directly engage the Russians i.e. the war will expand further.
In modern times with modern medicine
Quaint that you believe the Russian cannon fodder are getting access to modern medicine.
Is there any possibility liquidated is losing something in translation and refers to all killed and captured / wounded and captive in Ukraine?
In historical times, ratio of dead to wounded averaged around 3:1
In modern times with modern medicine that ratio can go between 10:1 or 17:1 in the US, but Iraq and Afghanistan were fundamentally different to other conflicts as it was more insurgency that full scale war.
Huge difference between ~70k dead, and 80k dead/wounded/captured. Close to 100k total casualties is a far more realistic number
One of the things that has changed in those times is that armies have realised the burden that a badly wounded person is as opposed to a dead one. Plenty of artillery munitions and drone-grenades are based on the principle of giving disfiguring injuries and wounds rather than aiming to kill, because it increases the burden on the opposition. Munitions designed to shrapnel are seeing increasing use, particularly for entrenched positions. Horrible things, but they are reported to cause more wounding.
Even without that however, given the nature of this conflict is far more conflict at a distance, with shelling, drones, and MLRS being chiefly used, most wounded would still remain in "their sides" territory, and be much easier to recover. Finally theres the fact that the russians have been trying to defend what little territory they have for the most part since the Summer, and though they no doubt took a few 1000 in losses during their retreats in Kharkiv, its been mostly defending entrenched positions. I would be shocked if the wounded to dead ratio was less than that of US in WW1's 1:1.8.
So taking that as our lowest figure, would mean 70k dead : 126k wounded. 190k casualties, more than the entire forces first committed to the invasion SMO.
Hearing so many mixed messages about Kherson but yeah it seems like that's going to be a tough slog. The guys on the War on the Rocks podcast have just visited Ukraine and that's the sense that they had about it.
I dunno, Timmy will probably show his workings for his 10:1 wounded:dead ratio.
Or maybe he believes the most up to date official Russian figure of only 6000 dead, which begs the question why they mobilised 300k 🤷♂️
I don't see them making much inroads in Kherson in the next few weeks myself. Hopefully I'm wrong. Svatove though could and should be under siege from the Ukrainians within a few days.
No doubt it's a high-level estimate given the source.
As for that ratio that you're using - that assumes a scenario where wounded soldiers are given life saving treatment on the battlefield and promptly evacuated to hospitals. If they instead just bleed out and die that significantly lowers that ratio.
Here's a table showing those numbers for wars that Americans have fought in:
In the large conventional 20th century wars that ratio ranged from 1.7 : 2.8
The OEF and OIF 21st century conflicts were characterized by large numbers of IED attacks that tended to injure soldiers rather than kill them. They also weren't being bombarded with artillery, far from the safety of a base on a daily basis.
There was also this from a few months ago which, at the time tallied with what the UA had as their estimate. If this document has been debunked then I'm all ears:
I am inclined to believe the figures that the US and UK give. They had the Russian casualties number at 80k (killed, wounded, captured, missing). This number is out of date, we're probably looking at a number north of 100k now.
More likely wildly inflated numbers for propaganda purposes. It's a war, all sides lie, including the good guys
What scrutiny? Yours?
US intelligence estimates Russia's losses in its war on Ukraine at about 500 soldiers per day - NYT - 12 August, 2022
That was 6 weeks ago, I get a sense things have really picked up in the last week - 60 tik tokkers in their Barracks one day, and 200 Wagner group wiped out the next via close order battles in their own base of operations.
Anywhere from 240 to 800k wounded based on 80k dead?
As they used to say in the leaving cert: Show your calculations
Ukraine is not in NATO and it is none of Russia's business if they want to apply to join. You know NATO was a handy excuse to invade and that has been debunked countless times here already, most likley to yourself under one of your other accounts. Leave N Ireland out of it as you haven't a clue about that either. The only stupidity I see is in your posts.
Nobody can give a fault proof headcount thats the point - as for assertions like:
Most of the claims since day one have been pretty close to the button give or take a thousand
How can you claim it's been close +-1000 if all you are going off is Ukraine MoD claims? You're basically comparing the same thing with itself and stating "Looks good to me"
The only people who actually know the casualties are the Ukraine MoD (who will lie) and the Russian MoD (who will lie). Some OSINT types have been accumulating death notices of people known to be in the combat zone, but this is incredibly slow work with many gaps. To date none of their estimates come close to that of either Ministry of Defense for the # of dead opposition soldiers.
☢️The Russian Foreign Ministry allowed nuclear war.
Officially, it sounds like this: the use of nuclear weapons is hypothetically possible "in response to aggression", "when the very existence of the state is threatened".
Unofficially: when Putin wants to
INFO FRONT
That seems to be the Ukrainian take on the meeting the US are so recently concerned about. I hope it's just more orchestrated sabre rattling. Are they really so naive that they think making such noises is going to magically stop a hot war and give them a breather or a win via peace talks?
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