Agreed. But it’s hard thing to control when you’re under attack.
I find the 40k figure hard to believe, have any US or British intelligence validated that or even any figure close to it?
I find the 40k figure hard to believe, have any US or British intelligence validated that or even any figure close to it?
Not that I'm aware of. I keep seeing the 9-10k killed or wounded figure in various sources but haven't seen any for POWs. What is a 'normal' ratio of POWs to casualties? Does 3x sound about right or is that way over the top?
Re the oil sales in roubles:
They can set the price whatever they want in Roubles, but that will force people to buy them to make the transaction which will prop up the value.
Precisely this.
Keep in mind that these are educated guesses. What does seem clear is that the Russians have taken horrendous losses and cannot sustain this.
https://twitter.com/ELINTNews/status/1506682618967990272
30-40k seems to be fairly commonly quoted for total casualties ie killed AND wounded. It’s not that hard to get to if you accept killed is 7-15k and a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1 for wounded to killed.
Impossible to say of course what the real number is - fog of war, propaganda, misinformation etc but it does feel like it is a pretty disastrous number in any event.
imbog160
Full Member
30-40k seems to be fairly commonly quoted for total casualties ie killed AND wounded. It’s not that hard to get to if you accept killed is 7-15k and a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1 for wounded to killed.
The war is 31 days old, so that would be Ukraine putting 1000-1300 Russians out of commission per day? I'll be on the skeptical side myself. At that rate you'd expect the Russian's to be turning tail and running.
Pretty clear the Ukrainians are doing well though, and we are probably settling into an attempt at consolidating the land grab now I think. Just get the sense it's obvious much more progress isn't going to happen from the Russian side, unless they crack open the real nasty stuff.
The war is 31 days old, so that would be Ukraine putting 1000-1300 Russians out of commission per day? I’ll be on the skeptical side myself. At that rate you’d expect the Russian’s to be turning tail and running.
Also includes "missing" I think - which may be significant when you take into account desertions due to lack of food/supplies/frostbite/general disillusionment, but also people who's 40 year old transport has broken-down or otherwise become disconnected from their unit and just taken it upon themselves to wander back to the border.
Whether this stuff is true or not - my main concern is what Putin will do if the Russian Forces continue to be humiliated like this? Humiliation is certainly the message that's being communicated by the Ukrainian's and the western media. If that continues, Putin will become more-and-more desperate to salvage some measure of success from this ridiculous endeavor - which I fear will look like more indiscriminate shelling (or worse)
I’ll be on the skeptical side myself. At that rate you’d expect the Russian’s to be turning tail and running.
There are reports that any enlisted Russian who turns tail and runs is treated as a deserter, the punishment being a firing squad. They cannot retreat as a unit, they can only abandon their post as an individual and either surrender or hide and hope to wait it out. Sabotaging vehicles would be pretty tempting under those circumstances.
Looking at the scale of destruction of many of the destroyed vehicles, it's obvious that the crews could not have survived. Each tank had a crew of three, many other vehicles would have had ten or more personnel on board. If you multiply the number of vehicles confirmed destroyed by two as a very conservative estimate of deaths, that comes to about 3,500 deaths from vehicle crews alone. There are currently 1,782 vehicles confirmed destroyed, that's a conservative number, the true figure will be higher. 10,000 deaths overall is easy to believe.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
thols2
Free Member
There are currently 1,782 vehicles confirmed destroyed, that’s a conservative number, the true figure will be higher. 10,000 deaths overall is easy to believe.
Russia - 1782, of which:
destroyed: 869
damaged: 33, abandoned: 228, captured: 652
869 destroyed according to that site, how is that site verifying what it's saying btw? Surely they need more than just an uploaded image?
Is that actual verifiable info? or just a totting up of social media claims?
Ukraine - 520, of which: destroyed: 196, damaged: 12, abandoned: 37, captured: 275
If correct, the ukrainian numbers seem very low, consider the damage we can clearly see the russians are doing. Understandable there's a reluctance to provided info on Ukrainian movements and loses though, so I get the apparent disparity.. but still on the other hand I get the enthusiasm to inflate Russian numbers.
Like I say, still skeptical.
Is that actual verifiable info?
Those are verified through photos and videos. That guy goes to a lot of trouble to eliminate duplicate reports, two photos of the same destroyed vehicle taken from different angles, for example. Those numbers are very conservative.
Russia – 1782, of which:
destroyed: 869
damaged: 33, abandoned: 228, captured: 652
Sorry, that should have been confirmed lost. Point is that most of the destroyed vehicles would have involved multiple Russian fatalities. Similarly with the captured ones, those would have been the result of combat, with multiple Russian deaths and casualties for most of them. The abandoned ones were found by Ukrainian civilians, not military personnel so there would be far fewer casualties related to those.
That means you're looking at 1,500 or so vehicles lost in combat. That's going to involve thousands of Russian dead, it's difficult to believe there weren't multiple deaths for each vehicle lost.
Interesting read from 2015. Russia underestimated NATO, the West overestimated Russia.
Putin suffers from the same kind of thinking, but Russia’s generals, who are neither fools nor madmen, almost certainly understand that a sustained war with NATO is an unwinnable proposition. Both Putin and his generals, however, are counting on a political, not military, victory. Putin’s bluster and the Russian military’s continued probes and feints into NATO territory are all predicated on the Soviet-era belief that NATO is essentially a charade, a phony alliance made of spun glass: pretty to look at, but so delicate it will shatter at even the smallest blow. Should Putin attack, it will not be to defend the “rights of Russian-speakers” or some other fantasy, but rather from the delusion that one sharp military strike will smash NATO as a political entity once and for all.
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1506835119620997120
thols2
Free Member
Is that actual verifiable info?Those are verified through photos and videos.
So it's basically just a count of unique social media claims then?
So it’s basically just a count of unique social media claims then?
Geolocated photos. His list includes links to photos of every vehicle listed. He seems to be quite cautious about what he counts, he's not just documenting random posts on social media. His numbers will be an underestimate of the true losses.
https://twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1506762483738030090
https://twitter.com/AlexandruC4/status/1506761204462669834?s=20&t=3Y68zTiT462xv6JqSezSRQ
That is nuts.
Nobody gets hurt in the clip.
That clip above is apparently from 2017
Yes I’m not sure I believe that clip, although I don’t think the Ukrainians need to be bigging up their bravery as far as I’m concerned. Reports this morning that Ukraine has sunk one of the Russian Navy’s landing ships in Berdyansk and damaged others. And as a reminder, Ukraine has no navy any more 😳.
Yup was asvertised on Russian state TV at the Ukrainian port 3 days before
https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1506887426123382785?t=hwEY-BvfnkjnXqUiT1DCqQ&s=19
And as a reminder, Ukraine has no navy any more 😳.
They didn’t really have a navy before this all kicked off
That is nuts.
Nobody gets hurt in the clip.
That clip is taken from a video in 2017, no idea what's going on in it
Reading reports that are saying the Russians still have control of large sections of Mariupol. the residents that are still in unoccupied parts of town are scared to come out of their basements as the Russians are shooting at any-one moving around the city some are saying that they're deliberately targeting women to get Ukrainian forces to come to their aid. The people need evacuating, but there are very few working cars, and no fuel. The fate of 1000 or so in the theatre is still unknown/vague. the bomb shelters are full of folks.
The loss of that landing ship has been confirmed.
Major setback for the operations in the south and for morale.
The loss of that landing ship has been confirmed.
Good. Hopefully hit before landing troops and equipment.
LBC just had on a black cab driver who was part of a group who drove to the Ukraine border to pick up families and take them... wherever... his trip was to Berlin. Very moving to listen to. If they clip it, I'll share it here.
I would be quite open to driving to the border to give people lifts, if that's still needed.
The black cab drivers are going for another go... sound like it's very much still needed. Would all make more sense if they could bring people back to the UK with them... but hey.
The video of that landing ship ablaze. It also looks like another 2 damaged - one more than the other. You can se them sail away.
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1506963317943943170
That clip is taken from a video in 2017, no idea what’s going on in it
Ah
In my defence, I don’t wake up a cynic.
I don’t wake up a cynic.
Let sleeping d(i)og(enes) lie?
Verification is very tough with all the bs that is out there, but Oryx does at least try, and he knows his video games 😀. I believe itv used some video game footage in one of its news reports hence the reference!
[url= https://i.postimg.cc/8cFSknhg/87-F104-B0-3-BCB-4-EBD-A2-E8-DC246-C8-FCF10.pn g" target="_blank">https://i.postimg.cc/8cFSknhg/87-F104-B0-3-BCB-4-EBD-A2-E8-DC246-C8-FCF10.pn g"/> [/img][/url]
I follow a couple of Anti Fascist twitter feeds and some of them are sharing whatsapps and tweets from what they say are US neo nazis that have gone out to Ukraine to join the Azov Units.
One of them is reporting that the regular Ukrainian army is intercepting them when they start asking questions about joining (Azov), giving them shoddy 2nd hand equipment, an AK-47 and half a clip and sending them into places like South West Kyiv This idiot says there are others from places like Germany and the UK. and he's basically said he expects to get shot, and complaining that there's no medics or evacuation from the battlefields
Another is reporting the same things essentially and says that out the 10 or so he was put with most are dead after trying to get into a gunfight with a Russian APC
Lady at work husband went to help to build temporary accommodation for the Red Cross at the Polish border.
He ended up in Lviv due to a mix up in translation and purpose.
He was tasked with trying to identify and bury people. He left when it all got too much and the numbers stretched into 3 figures. Hes a chippy, not a trained red Cross medic.
I assume that this means that the current conscripts are supposed to be going home on 1 April. Obviously, they won't, but tens of thousands of conscripts not coming home will make the scale of the war impossible to hide. Apparently, conscripts aren't supposed to be posted outside Russia. It's pretty obvious that thousands of them are dead in Ukraine, but Putin doesn't dare acknowledge that. It's going to be harder and harder to deny that this is a catastrophe once the conscripts don't return.
https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1506995764584722439
Conscription
The Russian Armed Forces conscript men semi-annually, with the fall draft lasting from October 1 until December 31 and the spring draft running from April 1 until July 15.[3] In 2022, the Kremlin announced the spring draft early on February 18.[4] The draft affects all men aged 18 to 27 years old, though some conscripts can be as young as 16 years old.[5] Russian conscripts typically serve one year.[6] The annual conscription pool of all Russian military-aged men is approximately 1.2 million people, though only about half are compelled to present themselves at their local military commissariat (voenkomat). The Russian General Staff reported conscripting 127,000 people for the fall 2021 draft and 134,000 people in spring 2021 out of 672,000 summoned men.[7] The number of conscripts is relatively consistent year on year, with 263,000 in 2020 and 267,000 in 2019.[8] Approximately 261,000 conscripts from 2021 are currently serving across Russian units, with the fall 2021 conscripts entering their third month of training.
New conscripts undergo a one- to two-month basic training, followed by three-to-six months of advanced training before arriving at their assigned units.[9] Current law precludes conscripts from deploying to combat with less than four months of training; however, martial law or general mobilization could supersede the current policy, allowing for the immediate employment of new conscripts or mobilized reservists.[10] Some of the fall 2021 conscripts are likely already serving in units fighting in Ukraine. The rapid employment of relatively untrained reservists is unlikely to materially increase Russia’s combat power in Ukraine.
Regs for conscripts will be either changed or ignored.
Murray's link refers to conscripts typically serving a one year term - that's not definitive so can easily ve extended.
the Kremlin announced the spring draft early on February 18.
They weren't trying hard to hide what they had planned, were they?
Ukraine's ability to control the narrative in our space is amazing. I've had a good hunt to find estimates of Ukrainian losses but they seem impossible to find although I'm sure Russia must be putting them out there.
Try Googling Ukrainian military casualties - first hit gives you a US estimate and Ukrainian estimate, guess which is higher?
Neither of those, nor the Russian numbers are likely to be accurate though. I think the best we can say is that they give us an upper and lower boundary. Even if any of the sides wanted to give accurate figures the situation is so confused on the ground it would be impossible for some time.
Try Googling Ukrainian military casualties
I did that but I only really saw extremes at either ends. I would normally expect to see various newspapers put their interpretations on what they thought was more likely but I'm not seeing it. But for Russian casualties everyone seems to go with whatever the upper limit is
I did that but I only really saw extremes at either ends. I would normally expect to see various newspapers put their interpretations on what they thought was more likely but I’m not seeing it. But for Russian casualties everyone seems to go with whatever the upper limit is
The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Anyway, if Ukraine is having the upper hand then the Russian would be withdrawing or call for negotiation but so far not so. Winning the battle is not the same as winning the war.
Failure of the Russian military machine in Afghanistan (15,000 dead over 10 yrs) contributed to the fall of the USSR by undermining the image of the Red Army as invincible. Sound familiar ?
if Ukraine is having the upper hand then the Russian would be withdrawing or call for negotiation
The only way they wouldn't is if they were run by a power-crazed megalomaniac with delusions. Oh, hang on...
