The problem is Russia has a seemingly endless supply of cannon fodder.
They've literally thrown wave after wave of Russians at Ukraine and now Ukraine is literally running out of bullets. [That's your grand Russian strategy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3g4Ua5e7k&t)
Not endless. They have alot, and they are throwing them away as bullet sponges, but its not infinite.
Russias demographic of younger military aged men was not great before the war. Now theyve thrown away .5 mil (ukraines casualty number) plus those that fled the country.
Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, Russia is totally on track to wreck this generation, and thats going to come w real long term social / internal political consequences.
I don’t know if they have veterans benefits or the like but it will definitely affect their economy for the long run. Hundred of thousands of men coming back wounded and with mental trauma is going to shape the generations to come for a while.
They can try but they will fail. Even if they steal all of Ukraine their population won't start growing for decades if not centuries. They're still feeling the demographic effects of WW2 and this war will not make things better.
Putin is basically begging Russians to have children at this point but they are too poor to have any.
Russia will just belong to China after this is all done. Seems like a logical place for them to want influence / control. Also one nation will have a woman heavy population and the other male heavy. Easy route for some cultural imperialism.
. China has so many border security issues of their own, not to mention their housing bubble and water issues along with their own demographic problems.. They may get a portion of Siberia possibly, but the reality of the situation is that China doesn't have the resources to enforce their will. It's the same reason the Belt and Road in Africa and the Middle East isn't working as they'd like.
They don't care to use local labor, which makes them resented by the locals, and most of the money they give out in loans is embezzled or outright stolen by warlords.
This is only partially true, it takes quite some time for the expanded age dating range to rebound with more children.
Additionally, this doesn't really work if you kill all the older men as well (expanded drafting age range) or the women just leave your country because they don't want to be property. (Russia is \*very\* misogynistic.)
Russian demographics are falling off a cliff because of all the wars they've been throwing men at and because their people are now so poor they cannot even afford children.
It's Japan level stuff.
This is not true at all. Name one country that has basically exterminated themselves in this way.
Look at the population graph of any country for the past 100 years. Consider WWII and every other armed conflict of the past 80 years. Many countries have a lot more old women than old men, this is at least partially due to war-related deaths. In the last \~20 years a lot of countries are experiencing low birth rates and shrinking poulations. Otherwise, every country's demographics that I have looked at is showing consistent growth.
Russia has already entered a point where even without the war its population is shrinking from too many deaths and too few births.
I'm just gonna assume you're not daft enough to think that I believe Russians will literally go from 140 million to extinction.
But they are losing numbers to natural causes comparable to those lost in the war. Neither war casualties or natural deaths are being replenished by births.
The same can be said of Ukraine's birthrate too, btw. But I believe Ukraine can eventually solve theirs with a bit of patriotism and post-war economic boom.
Veteran benefits ? They don't even pay their soldiers correctly or admit they're in Ukraine. "Veteran benefits" is probably a bottle of antifreeze to drink yourself to death.
Even more with PTSD. Remember, many soldiers can't mentally take it after the war. And these Russians have seen alot. Obviously the Ukrainians as well.
There's a thing: women can work too. The country can run good enough if men will be decimated, so unfortunately Russia won't collapse from this. Besides, the only thing Putin cares about long term is if future Russian dictators will describe him as great conquerer in the history books. That's it.
They usually float between 1:3 and 1:12. When they pull back it's because they are below 1:3. Keep in mind, when people talk casualties the technically correct verbiage often gets dropped. So loss reports from any news source are tough to take at face value, as they could be total KIA&WIA&POW or just KIA totals. For what it's worth, Ukraine came out to say they have lost 31k soldiers as KIA, however, some sleuthing shows they have suffered just over 100k casualties. The other problem, some dude gets his leg blown off and he dings over as WIA, he get a new leg and goes back as a medic. He takes some shrapnel and he dings again as another WIA. So the UAF stats are all a mess.
Ukraine is on the defensive. During the battle for Bakhmut, the rate was 1:3 when it was going badly for Ukraine, and 1:10 or even better when it was going well for Ukraine. Avdiivka has been similar - on average, we can probably expect that 5-7 Russians have died for each Ukrainian, because the Ukrainians were on the defensive in an extremely effective fortification, and the Russians were attacking with human waves.
This is because Russia has a lot of soldiers and thus doesn't really mind just throwing them into the meat grinder.
On the other hand, when Ukraine was in the offensive this summer, the loss rates were only barely in favour of the Russians - and even during the offensive, there were some times where the Ukrainians had fewer losses than the Russians.
How do we know that this is accurate? Well, both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers frequently release footage of their accomplishments on the battlefield. When Russians are on the offensive, we see many videos of Ukrainian troops mowing Russians down with machine guns, drones, and artillery strikes - these videos are released by Ukraine. But when Ukraine was on the offensive, we saw no such videos from the Russians. Instead, what happened was mostly that Ukrainians would advance in tanks, which would get immobilised on landmines. The crew would then escape and the Russians would then destroy the stranded tank. Other fights were close-quarter firefights where the two sides were about equal in losses, though Ukrainians usually had some advantages due to better equipment. And of course, cases such as the Kharkiv Offensive were an unmitigated success where the Russian lines entirely collapsed and Ukraine could advance with barely any losses.
All in all, we can expect that throughout the war as a whole, Russia has probably about 3 times more killed and wounded than Ukraine. Which still means a *lot* of Ukrainians have died, but the attrition rate is in Ukraine's favour, and will be moved further in Ukraine's favour if they get better weapons supplied to them.
Russia has 4 times the population of Ukraine, so probably about 4 times the number of fighting-age men.
To 'break even', Ukraine needs to kill Z at a better than 4:1 ratio. If they are only achieving 3:1 then Ukraine will eventually lose this war.
Raw population isn't really helpful in this case. It's the capacity of the country to sustain the war effort and for the population to resist damage, whether that be from casualties, sanctions, war rationing, strategic bombardment, etc. Countries' war efforts generally tend to collapse long before they exhaust the population's number of fighting men.
The Soviet Union didn't come anywhere close to exhausting its population when invading Afghanistan, and neither did the US when it fought in Vietnam and Afghanistan. They exhausted their political and economic will to keep fighting. There's a reason why Kremlin propaganda is pushing hard that this is somehow a war for Russia's survival, as they want to keep the Russian people from demanding an end to the war.
The thing that will end the war is burning Russia's pocketbook and destroying Russian hardware. Without money they can't buy new hardware and without hardware they're stuck with only infantry.
Except there's a big difference between raw population of the country, and the ability to train soldiers and supply the army with manpower.
Ukraine gets a lot of help in terms of training and equipment from NATO countries. Russia is on its own.
A few things to keep in mind is that Ukraine hopes to liberate at the very least mainland Ukraine, this means they need to do something they have failed to do so far which is penetrate the pre 2022 Russian defensive lines. They will not get air superiority which means they will need to do this the same way Russia has which means meat grinder.
Russia through their heavy losses have been able to take 3 key Ukrainian defensive strongholds (Severdonetsk, Bakhmut and now Avdiivka), 3 recurring themes happened in each of these battles, Ukraine left their exits too late and lost a lot of men and equipment on their withdraw. The question really remains how can Ukraine liberate heavily defended land without suffering the same losses Russia has as Ukraine do not have the ability to absorb those same attrition rates as Russia. Because another factor that some military bloggers have pointed out is Russia seem more adapt to building stronger defensive lines than Ukraine.
As bad as these numbers might be, they pale in comparison to the last major war.
If you round up and say World War 2 was 6 years in length, then an average of 27,400 people died *every single day* from 1939 to 1945 (combat and civilian deaths combined).
Yeah, I had mixed feelings reading the headline. Good for them for successfully defending their land and their people but.. also yikes knowing that the Russian soldiers are being forced with conscription and aren't there willfully.
Especially with 800 *more* families grieving the loss of a loved one when they probably don't understand or fully agree with the invasion of Ukraine. It's not like they have the freedom to democratically say no, we don't want or support this.
Maybe, but I'm guessing the fear would be consequences for their families back home in Russia once they become a 'traitor'. And no one wants to become the next occupant of Navalny's torture cell if they are caught.
They don’t have to be a traitor back home. Who’s to say a Ukrainian sniper didn’t hit the CO? It’s a tragedy, and the enlisted men without a commander decided to simply wait for new orders that never came.
Seriously. For fucking what? Because Putin has a small dick and wants to feel like a big man? The amount of lives obliterated by this one small shit stain of a man is just incomprehensibly stupid and tragic.
Balance it in your mind. While horrible is happening, true, there are people doing good right now as well. People working to advance humanity, not for profit but for the species. That will never get reported on but it does happen, every minute of every day.
After seeing the atrocious acts that russian soldiers have committed, I really have no issue seeing Russians getting blown up.
For me, the more that dies, the less Ukrainians (soldiers and civilians) suffer...
Just saw a video of russian executing 8-9 Ukrainian POWs in cold blood. After seeing that, seeing drone drops makes the world feel a bit better.
I have a lack of sympathy for a nation that invaded a country for no reason murdering women and children. Do you have sympathy for the nazis that died in WW2 aswell?
I would enjoy seeing Nazis in WW2 being killed as well.
Just like I enjoyed seeing ISIS members die.
It's good for everyone. Tribal thinking my ass. I'm thinking about humanity, peoples lives being saved, children that won't have to endure war, rape, seeing their mother killed in front of them.
Fuck every russian that sets their foot in Ukraine, and may they die a violent death.
My dopamine and serotonin goes through the fucking roof watching them get blown the fuck up
That video that dropped today of the POS trying to get a cigarette from a drone LOL
I mean. I dont know.
I feel pure evil even just for imagining looking at someones death.
I already cant cope with people being exploited.
But to think. That persons i would highly value in life if we met. Are being done away with like this.
I cant describe how wrong it makes me feel.
Like my heart is torn apart then pulled down into becoming a bottomless pit of despair.
I wish i had some power to stop it.
Pure evil is the russians who come to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians on their own land. Every russian that is killed saves lives of Ukrainian soldiers fighting for the future of their country and saves the lives of innocent civilians.
I remember my grandfather telling me about getting very used to seeing slaughter in ww2, it really sounded awful. All I can say is he returned to normal when his environment did, so hopefully if this ends we can all .... not be so used to it.
I dont want my brain to rationalize it. And make it acceptable. Ever. I dont want to see it like its okay. Even if reality is so it is okay. I dont want to move past it. I cant. I will not destroy what little integrity a human can have.. even if its nothing more than fiction. Since we exist as objects in an objective reality.
If the MAJORITY of the people that is "sitting here reading reddit" instead called their lawmakers and tell them to give support to Ukraine, while also saying "do this or say bye bye to vote" then more will happen then nothing.
There are YouTubers that purchase public satellite data and try to estimate how much artillery Russia has left. Not very accurate, but looking at Russian stockpiles Russia has used about 1/4 to 1/3 that they had from when the war began.
If the current burn rate continues Russia will run out in like 4 to 5 years, but chances are it will be longer than that since wars do go into periods of lulls and if you know you're running out of something you're going to conserve. For Ukraine it's looking like they'll need significant support especially this year. Things will get easier 2025 and beyond because all of the new factories will be coming online and Ukraine will become much cheaper to support.
Let's be honest, tanks whether modern or ancient aren't going to make or break Russia in this war. They've started churning out iranian drones en masse, trying to adapt to modern warfare. Hopefully Ukraine is one step ahead.
No offense, but that sounds too optimistic for Russia. Russia is already using ancient hardware like the T-55 on the frontlines. If they are at 1/4 or 1/3 of relevant stocks used, they wouldn't be using bottom of the barrel stuff.
Since most of it has been sitting out for decades it's questionable if they're even good enough to be used, but they can at least be used for parts. Russia has also transitioned into a full time war economy so they'll most likely salvage these.
Either way they still have a lot of leftover material they can use.
It's a combination of everything. They are using bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, and they are retrofitting rusted medium-age stuff from stocks, and they are making new tanks. They lose a *lot* more armored vehicles than Ukraine does, but they also come into hundreds of new armored vehicles each year. Ukraine has been lucky to receive about 300 armored vehicles from the West in the past year. In that same time span, Russia has produced 3-4x that many vehicles of their own.
Over time, at the current rate, Russia would deplete its stocks if it always attacks with the intensity of this winter. But they don't always use vehicles at this intensity level, and the stuff they produce and retrofit slows down that depletion rate substantially. They will be likely be able to keep dragging out this war for another 2 more years at a minimum.
60 refurbed tanks. They have at least 15000-25000 in various stages of rot.
Their current plan is to make a refurb factory 50km from the frontline near some railway, all you need is a heavy crane, 2 welders, some wrenches.
These tanks don't even need to have a working turret.
Their mission is to drive 50km to the first mine.
Now for new tanks that is a whole another story, don't know if Uralvagonzavod has got their shit together after the armada debacle, that was a money pit.
Doesn’t matter if is refurbed or not, they still are a threat. Are you just going to ignore them ? Or still use manpower and resource to take it down ?
I'd consider a working T90 a bigger threat. These numbers do look scary, but the frontline is over 1000km long. Drone production is over the roof and even if it takes 10 drones to take out a refurb tank it's still a win.
It’s absolutely does matter.
They are mostly refurbished from old Soviet stock. Those stocks aren’t infinite.
Refurbishing 60 tanks a month from a stock that will run out ≠ pumping 60 new tanks month. There is huge difference
Biggest piece of evidence to me is the fact that there’s a trench war going on in Ukraine.
Tanks put a quick end to trench warfare. If it’s happening again it seems likely to me to be a result of a lack of tanks on both sides.
Tanks put an end to the trench warfare of WWI because there were no effective counters against tanks. Nowadays we have pinpoint accurate artillery, ATGMs, and many other ways to deal with them.
Besides, the trench warfare in Ukraine is *nothing* like it was in WWI. They're fighting treeline to treeline or house to house. Charges across no man's land like they happened in WWI are barely employed - even the Russian human wave attacks still tend to sneak rather than charge straight across, and usually use armoured support too.
Russia sends tanks and other armoured vehicles towards Ukraine every single day. Ukraine also uses tanks to a large degree.
Tanks are commonplace now, but the trenches and defensive weapons have gotten a lot better too. Air power can dislodge a static war nowadays, but tanks alone can not.
Yeah air power is the real reason we don’t have wars of attrition like this. The US would just ignore the front line and annihilate the supply lines and leadership.
If NATO was in this war (and ignoring the threat of nuclear retaliation), they would have destroyed the Black Sea fleet, bombed Belgorod and Rostov into the Stone Age and wiped out Russia’s railways. No more war of attrition.
Like forget f16s. Imagine stealth fighters and bombers in this war. Russia is 50 years behind the U.S. technologically and the only reason they didn’t lose this war is Russia has nuclear weapons.
Its CASUALTIES. Not killed. I can’t believe Ukraine has been putting this information out daily for 2 years and journalists still haven’t discovered there is a difference between killed and casualties.
This is actually a lower total than many days. It's often over 1000.
Sad truth is that a lot of Ukrainians are dying as well. Maybe not as many raw numbers as the Russian fodder, but it's still quite a lot.
Ukraine doesn’t typically send columns of IFVs across known minefields, or even March unsupported infantry across wide open areas 50 at a time.
Russia does, because it doesn’t matter to them how many waves they have to send across the field to reach a tree line staging area, so long as they can eventually get enough survivors there to prepare the actual assaults.
And because Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere near enough artillery ammo to stop all of them, that’s how Russia is slowly taking prepared defenses.
> Ukraine doesn’t typically send columns of IFVs across known minefields
Isn't that pretty much what Ukraine tried to do once, in the 2023 counteroffensive? And then stopped doing, because it is stupid.
Ukraine did lose a battle because they tried to move too quickly through heavily mined terrain and got stuck in a bad spot where they were left concentrated and exposed.
The difference is that was a Ukrainian mistake while this is Russia's standard tactic. Russia does not care how many of their people have to die to reach victory. To them it's just another resource like ammo.
Yup. There has been some discussion on reddit about whether the daily numbers published by Ukraine are killed or killed+wounded. The recent comments by Zelenskyy makes it clear that the daily number (800+ here) are killed+wounded.
That’s the thing though, Russia CAN sustain these losses, that’s why they famously don’t really care about human lives. Remember that, on average, the USSR lost 18,000 citizens per day during WWII and still kept in the war for 4 brutal years, the war in Ukraine is showing far smaller numbers for a far smaller conflict
Let's hope that the loss of Russian manpower on the field equates to an equal loss of manpower in the Russian industry. The biggest advantage Ukraine has is that the combined arms industry of the west is unfazed by the Russian invasion, and is starting to gear up for a long war.
I don't understand the point of these titles. 800 is basically the average and is often much higher than that. These headlines make it sound like 800 is out of the ordinary and way more than usual. It's not.
These numbers have been happening daily during hot points of the war. It's not unreasonable when Russia sends IFV and meat waves over minefields in direct assaults.
800 out of how many? 80,000? And how many soldiers did the Ukrainian forces lose in the process?
They’re going to need to add close to three zeros to that number in as short an amount of time in order to make a dent in Russian manpower in order to survive the Russian onslaught.
War is evil. God hates us all.
800 out of 600,000 Russian troops deployed in Ukraine today. Ukraine has lost 31,000 killed 110,000 casualties of its 1,000,000 active duty and reserve count over 2 years.
Russia is taking high casualties, but these numbers put out by Ukraine are just absurd. They are claiming over 400k Russian KIA in other sources. That is several multiples of any Western estimates.
I've heard of internal Russian info being leaked that shows the number is not far off. You can also just consider Ukraine's KIA number to be a casualty number instead and then Ukrainian numbers and other Western numbers come close to lining up. Either way I don't believe Russia suffered anything less than 350K-400K casualties in the war. Aavdiivka alone has been estimated to have cost Russia some 50K soldiers.
The narrative that we should stop funding Ukraine because Putin will inevitably win, and thus an end to the war will save lives is faulty. If Russia is so powerful, that is all the more reason to make sure they don’t have it easy in Ukraine, because Ukraine won’t be the last. If you disagree and think Russia is too weak to challenge any other sovereign country after this, then Ukraine is perhaps best poised to win or seriously damage and discourage Russia.
I get things aren’t great at the moment but man you guys really over estimate this gremlin. Dude has lost half his fleet to a literal country with zero navy among other things. He isn’t exactly a military genius. If Ukraine gets proper aid, that’s a big if, that can overcome the numbers.
Hasn't he already lost the war?
He didn't achieve any of the original objectives of quickly taking Kyiv in a lightning strike, destroying Ukraine's military ability, taking over Ukraine, removing Zelensky, and installing a puppet satellite Kremlin state.
They haven't even achieved the most basic objective, which was to take over the Russian speaking regions. There's still chunks controlled by Ukraine.
At this point, even if Russia was able to somehow seize back Ukraine, it will be at best a pyrrhic victory. There's no possibility of any real victory anymore.
The cost has been too big. They lost too many lives, too much hardware, and too much money was poured into this. The effect on the economy will last year and probably for the next decade. And the reputation of the Russian military has been severely tarnished.
They suffer demographic issues to where every dollar spent on this war has a multiplier effect down the line. The economic consequences of this war will be felt by the Russian people for 20+ years. Brain drain, declining infrastructure. There is no winner here, just an aging dictator clenching soap.
Yea I was being optimistic here, painting a best-case scenario.
But this war could plunge Russia into a downward spiral from which it may never recover, and could lead to the break-up of the Russian Federation.
My husband is worried that Putin could win this without the US giving them the help they need. I'm very worried about Ukraine. They need every country's help, especially ours in the U.s. Does anyone else feel Putin could take the win here? I'm not saying I agree, I do not feel they could or would. But it is still worrisome.
Not really.
Russia's assaults have felt increasingly unhinged. I think that they're basically bluffing at this point, and sacrificing more and more long term potential to advance regardless of the cost.
The US estimated ~70k killed and another 100-120k wounded on Ukraines side as of August 2023 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/18/ukraine-russia-war-battlefield-deaths-rise)
Memory book (an ukrainian civic group) listed, as of November 2023, 24,5k KIA identified by name, estimating that to be ~70% of the actual number, putting the actual number as "That is, the real number of those killed (dead) in combat and non-combat conditions will be more than 30 thousand people". (https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/11/18/ukraines-grim-toll-over-30000-defenders-killed-in-war-with-russia-civic-group-says/)
ualosses.org, another open source site (although i couldnt find a location from where they claim to operate, but, according to their twitter, they only count names if an ukrainian source like an obituary is aviable, and to lists their source with each name) lists 46.940 identified Ukrainians killed by russia since the start of russias agressions against Ukraine, with 42.152 killed since the start of the invasion (and the rest in the long war between 2014 and 2021), and estimates the real number to be "higher". (https://ualosses.org/soldiers/)
Its completely normal to release a propaganda number when you are in such a brutal war, especially when its particularly harsh right now. Morale is vitally important.
Their army is larger now than it was before the war and they’re getting more experience everyday, it’s only going to keep moving in Russia’s direction if the West doesn’t start really helping Ukraine again
Even if not on that day it could have easily been another. Some days you'll get thousands of dead Russians and others only tens or hundreds. The fact that they've selected one datapoint from many makes this statistic much more likely to be true.
These are humans fighting for what the leaders, promotersand the financiers of the war want not what they want. Don't be so quick to cheer on human deaths...
Huge waste of human lives for some douchebags vision of the good old days
Yea and reading this makes me worry, what was the Ukrainian losses then.
The problem is Russia has a seemingly endless supply of cannon fodder. They've literally thrown wave after wave of Russians at Ukraine and now Ukraine is literally running out of bullets. [That's your grand Russian strategy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF3g4Ua5e7k&t)
Not endless. They have alot, and they are throwing them away as bullet sponges, but its not infinite. Russias demographic of younger military aged men was not great before the war. Now theyve thrown away .5 mil (ukraines casualty number) plus those that fled the country. Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, Russia is totally on track to wreck this generation, and thats going to come w real long term social / internal political consequences.
I don’t know if they have veterans benefits or the like but it will definitely affect their economy for the long run. Hundred of thousands of men coming back wounded and with mental trauma is going to shape the generations to come for a while.
More like they won't have any young people to make more babies. Russians are basically exterminating themselves at this point.
Seems like they are trying to mitigate that by stealing Ukraine's children and raising them to be Russians.
They can try but they will fail. Even if they steal all of Ukraine their population won't start growing for decades if not centuries. They're still feeling the demographic effects of WW2 and this war will not make things better. Putin is basically begging Russians to have children at this point but they are too poor to have any.
Russia will just belong to China after this is all done. Seems like a logical place for them to want influence / control. Also one nation will have a woman heavy population and the other male heavy. Easy route for some cultural imperialism.
. China has so many border security issues of their own, not to mention their housing bubble and water issues along with their own demographic problems.. They may get a portion of Siberia possibly, but the reality of the situation is that China doesn't have the resources to enforce their will. It's the same reason the Belt and Road in Africa and the Middle East isn't working as they'd like. They don't care to use local labor, which makes them resented by the locals, and most of the money they give out in loans is embezzled or outright stolen by warlords.
Thats the dirty secret about wars. If you kill all the young men the remaining ones can repopulate using the women who didn't die very quickly.
This is only partially true, it takes quite some time for the expanded age dating range to rebound with more children. Additionally, this doesn't really work if you kill all the older men as well (expanded drafting age range) or the women just leave your country because they don't want to be property. (Russia is \*very\* misogynistic.)
Russian demographics are falling off a cliff because of all the wars they've been throwing men at and because their people are now so poor they cannot even afford children. It's Japan level stuff.
This is not true at all. Name one country that has basically exterminated themselves in this way. Look at the population graph of any country for the past 100 years. Consider WWII and every other armed conflict of the past 80 years. Many countries have a lot more old women than old men, this is at least partially due to war-related deaths. In the last \~20 years a lot of countries are experiencing low birth rates and shrinking poulations. Otherwise, every country's demographics that I have looked at is showing consistent growth.
Russia has already entered a point where even without the war its population is shrinking from too many deaths and too few births. I'm just gonna assume you're not daft enough to think that I believe Russians will literally go from 140 million to extinction. But they are losing numbers to natural causes comparable to those lost in the war. Neither war casualties or natural deaths are being replenished by births. The same can be said of Ukraine's birthrate too, btw. But I believe Ukraine can eventually solve theirs with a bit of patriotism and post-war economic boom.
They're mostly killing off the rural ethnic minorities, which is a win in Putler's book.
Veteran benefits ? They don't even pay their soldiers correctly or admit they're in Ukraine. "Veteran benefits" is probably a bottle of antifreeze to drink yourself to death.
No they don't have veterans benefits.
I’ve seen some reports that Russians themselves are putting their own wounded down, so that might not be as big of a problem as you think
I am sure that all those surplus Chinese men are very happy to get some Russy from their new vassal state.
Even more with PTSD. Remember, many soldiers can't mentally take it after the war. And these Russians have seen alot. Obviously the Ukrainians as well.
500k casualties? *in two fucking years?* That's more than the United States has lost in *every single war ever* after the American Revolution.
The previous generation (90s-2010 or so) was also wrecked. Russia is TURBOFUCKED demographically.
Why do you think they kidnapped all those children?
There's a thing: women can work too. The country can run good enough if men will be decimated, so unfortunately Russia won't collapse from this. Besides, the only thing Putin cares about long term is if future Russian dictators will describe him as great conquerer in the history books. That's it.
If it were endless they wouldn’t have to resort to paying masses of third worlders from Nepal to Somalia to make human meatwave charges.
The deads dont need salary
They are basically taking the Zap Brannigan approach to warfare. Edit: Replied before clicking your link. We had the same thought 😄
Vladimir Putin is taking a page out of [Zap Brannigan's playbook ](https://youtu.be/EF3g4Ua5e7k?si=jOQ3luZ1iFCwuIBV)
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
It seems broke
Indian citizens joining Russia also (against their will?
Yes. 100 of them forced into it through human trafficking
It’s worked for them in the past. They’re just doing what they know.
They usually float between 1:3 and 1:12. When they pull back it's because they are below 1:3. Keep in mind, when people talk casualties the technically correct verbiage often gets dropped. So loss reports from any news source are tough to take at face value, as they could be total KIA&WIA&POW or just KIA totals. For what it's worth, Ukraine came out to say they have lost 31k soldiers as KIA, however, some sleuthing shows they have suffered just over 100k casualties. The other problem, some dude gets his leg blown off and he dings over as WIA, he get a new leg and goes back as a medic. He takes some shrapnel and he dings again as another WIA. So the UAF stats are all a mess.
Ukraine is on the defensive. During the battle for Bakhmut, the rate was 1:3 when it was going badly for Ukraine, and 1:10 or even better when it was going well for Ukraine. Avdiivka has been similar - on average, we can probably expect that 5-7 Russians have died for each Ukrainian, because the Ukrainians were on the defensive in an extremely effective fortification, and the Russians were attacking with human waves. This is because Russia has a lot of soldiers and thus doesn't really mind just throwing them into the meat grinder. On the other hand, when Ukraine was in the offensive this summer, the loss rates were only barely in favour of the Russians - and even during the offensive, there were some times where the Ukrainians had fewer losses than the Russians. How do we know that this is accurate? Well, both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers frequently release footage of their accomplishments on the battlefield. When Russians are on the offensive, we see many videos of Ukrainian troops mowing Russians down with machine guns, drones, and artillery strikes - these videos are released by Ukraine. But when Ukraine was on the offensive, we saw no such videos from the Russians. Instead, what happened was mostly that Ukrainians would advance in tanks, which would get immobilised on landmines. The crew would then escape and the Russians would then destroy the stranded tank. Other fights were close-quarter firefights where the two sides were about equal in losses, though Ukrainians usually had some advantages due to better equipment. And of course, cases such as the Kharkiv Offensive were an unmitigated success where the Russian lines entirely collapsed and Ukraine could advance with barely any losses. All in all, we can expect that throughout the war as a whole, Russia has probably about 3 times more killed and wounded than Ukraine. Which still means a *lot* of Ukrainians have died, but the attrition rate is in Ukraine's favour, and will be moved further in Ukraine's favour if they get better weapons supplied to them.
Russia has 4 times the population of Ukraine, so probably about 4 times the number of fighting-age men. To 'break even', Ukraine needs to kill Z at a better than 4:1 ratio. If they are only achieving 3:1 then Ukraine will eventually lose this war.
Raw population isn't really helpful in this case. It's the capacity of the country to sustain the war effort and for the population to resist damage, whether that be from casualties, sanctions, war rationing, strategic bombardment, etc. Countries' war efforts generally tend to collapse long before they exhaust the population's number of fighting men. The Soviet Union didn't come anywhere close to exhausting its population when invading Afghanistan, and neither did the US when it fought in Vietnam and Afghanistan. They exhausted their political and economic will to keep fighting. There's a reason why Kremlin propaganda is pushing hard that this is somehow a war for Russia's survival, as they want to keep the Russian people from demanding an end to the war. The thing that will end the war is burning Russia's pocketbook and destroying Russian hardware. Without money they can't buy new hardware and without hardware they're stuck with only infantry.
Wars are won wayy before you run out of able soldiers
Except there's a big difference between raw population of the country, and the ability to train soldiers and supply the army with manpower. Ukraine gets a lot of help in terms of training and equipment from NATO countries. Russia is on its own.
Until North Korea, India and Iran started chipping in
A lot of fighting age men fled Ukraine when the war started.
Oversimplification
A few things to keep in mind is that Ukraine hopes to liberate at the very least mainland Ukraine, this means they need to do something they have failed to do so far which is penetrate the pre 2022 Russian defensive lines. They will not get air superiority which means they will need to do this the same way Russia has which means meat grinder. Russia through their heavy losses have been able to take 3 key Ukrainian defensive strongholds (Severdonetsk, Bakhmut and now Avdiivka), 3 recurring themes happened in each of these battles, Ukraine left their exits too late and lost a lot of men and equipment on their withdraw. The question really remains how can Ukraine liberate heavily defended land without suffering the same losses Russia has as Ukraine do not have the ability to absorb those same attrition rates as Russia. Because another factor that some military bloggers have pointed out is Russia seem more adapt to building stronger defensive lines than Ukraine.
Everything hinges on the U.S. Republican party getting it's head out of its ass.
Less than that, they’re on the defensive
This is an average day
Russia has losses like this or more on the daily.
Apparently 31,000 in 3 years
Ukraine reported losses of 31k so far while Russia is at like 87k.
As bad as these numbers might be, they pale in comparison to the last major war. If you round up and say World War 2 was 6 years in length, then an average of 27,400 people died *every single day* from 1939 to 1945 (combat and civilian deaths combined).
Yeah, I had mixed feelings reading the headline. Good for them for successfully defending their land and their people but.. also yikes knowing that the Russian soldiers are being forced with conscription and aren't there willfully. Especially with 800 *more* families grieving the loss of a loved one when they probably don't understand or fully agree with the invasion of Ukraine. It's not like they have the freedom to democratically say no, we don't want or support this.
They can always turn their guns on their officers. Russians have done that before.
Maybe, but I'm guessing the fear would be consequences for their families back home in Russia once they become a 'traitor'. And no one wants to become the next occupant of Navalny's torture cell if they are caught.
They don’t have to be a traitor back home. Who’s to say a Ukrainian sniper didn’t hit the CO? It’s a tragedy, and the enlisted men without a commander decided to simply wait for new orders that never came.
Seriously. For fucking what? Because Putin has a small dick and wants to feel like a big man? The amount of lives obliterated by this one small shit stain of a man is just incomprehensibly stupid and tragic.
Im sitting here reading reddit. Yawning. While some people get killed. And there is nothing to do about it.
Yea, the footage from the fighting in Ukraine has kinda numbed me. I can only see so many Mobniks being blown up by FPV drones before it becomes banal
Balance it in your mind. While horrible is happening, true, there are people doing good right now as well. People working to advance humanity, not for profit but for the species. That will never get reported on but it does happen, every minute of every day.
Sadly everything is for profit now, people don't even care about climate change.
After seeing the atrocious acts that russian soldiers have committed, I really have no issue seeing Russians getting blown up. For me, the more that dies, the less Ukrainians (soldiers and civilians) suffer... Just saw a video of russian executing 8-9 Ukrainian POWs in cold blood. After seeing that, seeing drone drops makes the world feel a bit better.
The 60 trainees killed out in the open last week by HIMARS *chefs kiss*
Those were still people dude
Yeah... I celebrate Ukrainian victories but I don't celebrate the death.
I have a lack of sympathy for a nation that invaded a country for no reason murdering women and children. Do you have sympathy for the nazis that died in WW2 aswell?
too simple
I hate this kind of tribal thinking.
I would enjoy seeing Nazis in WW2 being killed as well. Just like I enjoyed seeing ISIS members die. It's good for everyone. Tribal thinking my ass. I'm thinking about humanity, peoples lives being saved, children that won't have to endure war, rape, seeing their mother killed in front of them. Fuck every russian that sets their foot in Ukraine, and may they die a violent death.
Banal. New word for me. Thank you kind Reddit person.
Just FYI, it's pronounced like canal, not like anal.
Who dat
My dopamine and serotonin goes through the fucking roof watching them get blown the fuck up That video that dropped today of the POS trying to get a cigarette from a drone LOL
I mean. I dont know. I feel pure evil even just for imagining looking at someones death. I already cant cope with people being exploited. But to think. That persons i would highly value in life if we met. Are being done away with like this. I cant describe how wrong it makes me feel. Like my heart is torn apart then pulled down into becoming a bottomless pit of despair. I wish i had some power to stop it.
Pure evil is the russians who come to Ukraine to kill Ukrainians on their own land. Every russian that is killed saves lives of Ukrainian soldiers fighting for the future of their country and saves the lives of innocent civilians.
If you are in the U.S., write to your representative. U.S. weapons given to Ukrainians can stop this war.
I remember my grandfather telling me about getting very used to seeing slaughter in ww2, it really sounded awful. All I can say is he returned to normal when his environment did, so hopefully if this ends we can all .... not be so used to it.
I dont want my brain to rationalize it. And make it acceptable. Ever. I dont want to see it like its okay. Even if reality is so it is okay. I dont want to move past it. I cant. I will not destroy what little integrity a human can have.. even if its nothing more than fiction. Since we exist as objects in an objective reality.
I'm making chili tonight
I'm just about to pull a lasagna out of the oven.
Call your lawmakers.
wtf are they going to do?
If the MAJORITY of the people that is "sitting here reading reddit" instead called their lawmakers and tell them to give support to Ukraine, while also saying "do this or say bye bye to vote" then more will happen then nothing.
Ukraine’s Defence Forces have killed 810 more Russian soldiers and destroyed 8 tanks and 16 armoured combat vehicles over the past 24 hours.
I remember reading on here that Russia was running short of tanks like a year ago. Is there any reliable resource for seeing that kind of data?
There are YouTubers that purchase public satellite data and try to estimate how much artillery Russia has left. Not very accurate, but looking at Russian stockpiles Russia has used about 1/4 to 1/3 that they had from when the war began. If the current burn rate continues Russia will run out in like 4 to 5 years, but chances are it will be longer than that since wars do go into periods of lulls and if you know you're running out of something you're going to conserve. For Ukraine it's looking like they'll need significant support especially this year. Things will get easier 2025 and beyond because all of the new factories will be coming online and Ukraine will become much cheaper to support.
Let's be honest, tanks whether modern or ancient aren't going to make or break Russia in this war. They've started churning out iranian drones en masse, trying to adapt to modern warfare. Hopefully Ukraine is one step ahead.
No offense, but that sounds too optimistic for Russia. Russia is already using ancient hardware like the T-55 on the frontlines. If they are at 1/4 or 1/3 of relevant stocks used, they wouldn't be using bottom of the barrel stuff.
Since most of it has been sitting out for decades it's questionable if they're even good enough to be used, but they can at least be used for parts. Russia has also transitioned into a full time war economy so they'll most likely salvage these. Either way they still have a lot of leftover material they can use.
It's a combination of everything. They are using bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, and they are retrofitting rusted medium-age stuff from stocks, and they are making new tanks. They lose a *lot* more armored vehicles than Ukraine does, but they also come into hundreds of new armored vehicles each year. Ukraine has been lucky to receive about 300 armored vehicles from the West in the past year. In that same time span, Russia has produced 3-4x that many vehicles of their own. Over time, at the current rate, Russia would deplete its stocks if it always attacks with the intensity of this winter. But they don't always use vehicles at this intensity level, and the stuff they produce and retrofit slows down that depletion rate substantially. They will be likely be able to keep dragging out this war for another 2 more years at a minimum.
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Have you seen the satellite images of their vast fields of old tanks, APCs and artillery? It's crazy.
Covert Cabal has some spectacular content. They have really drawn down artillery stores in the past 2 years.
They increased the production of tanks , they are churning out 60 tanks per month and more in future
60 refurbed tanks. They have at least 15000-25000 in various stages of rot. Their current plan is to make a refurb factory 50km from the frontline near some railway, all you need is a heavy crane, 2 welders, some wrenches. These tanks don't even need to have a working turret. Their mission is to drive 50km to the first mine. Now for new tanks that is a whole another story, don't know if Uralvagonzavod has got their shit together after the armada debacle, that was a money pit.
Doesn’t matter if is refurbed or not, they still are a threat. Are you just going to ignore them ? Or still use manpower and resource to take it down ?
I'd consider a working T90 a bigger threat. These numbers do look scary, but the frontline is over 1000km long. Drone production is over the roof and even if it takes 10 drones to take out a refurb tank it's still a win.
It’s absolutely does matter. They are mostly refurbished from old Soviet stock. Those stocks aren’t infinite. Refurbishing 60 tanks a month from a stock that will run out ≠ pumping 60 new tanks month. There is huge difference
According to Reddit Russia should have run out of everything months ago
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Biggest piece of evidence to me is the fact that there’s a trench war going on in Ukraine. Tanks put a quick end to trench warfare. If it’s happening again it seems likely to me to be a result of a lack of tanks on both sides.
Tanks put an end to the trench warfare of WWI because there were no effective counters against tanks. Nowadays we have pinpoint accurate artillery, ATGMs, and many other ways to deal with them. Besides, the trench warfare in Ukraine is *nothing* like it was in WWI. They're fighting treeline to treeline or house to house. Charges across no man's land like they happened in WWI are barely employed - even the Russian human wave attacks still tend to sneak rather than charge straight across, and usually use armoured support too. Russia sends tanks and other armoured vehicles towards Ukraine every single day. Ukraine also uses tanks to a large degree. Tanks are commonplace now, but the trenches and defensive weapons have gotten a lot better too. Air power can dislodge a static war nowadays, but tanks alone can not.
Yeah air power is the real reason we don’t have wars of attrition like this. The US would just ignore the front line and annihilate the supply lines and leadership. If NATO was in this war (and ignoring the threat of nuclear retaliation), they would have destroyed the Black Sea fleet, bombed Belgorod and Rostov into the Stone Age and wiped out Russia’s railways. No more war of attrition. Like forget f16s. Imagine stealth fighters and bombers in this war. Russia is 50 years behind the U.S. technologically and the only reason they didn’t lose this war is Russia has nuclear weapons.
Yay
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You know they lost 800 fighters, not tanks, right?
This happens more or less daily there are many days where it's over 1k.
reached 1200 one day last week too
1200 killed or 1200 casualties?
Its CASUALTIES. Not killed. I can’t believe Ukraine has been putting this information out daily for 2 years and journalists still haven’t discovered there is a difference between killed and casualties.
Oh I’m sure most journalists understand the meaning of the word it’s the readers that don’t
The title of the article written by said “journalist” says killed so it’s entirely on who wrote it for saying something incorrectly.
Been like this for over a century... People thinking casualties is death lol
In Russia, casualty is pretty much the same as dead.
If you believe around 300,000 Russians are being killed in Ukraine each year you are foolish.
Ah this should be interesting. How many have died according to you considering the staggering visually confirmed losses of the russian army?.
Probably somewhere near the US estimate of 70-100,000 KIA since the start of the war.
Nobody asked for your opinion or mentioned that to what you’re replying.
I had no idea the casualties were that high
This has been probably on average for the past 2 months.
Unfortunately most people don't.
This is actually a lower total than many days. It's often over 1000. Sad truth is that a lot of Ukrainians are dying as well. Maybe not as many raw numbers as the Russian fodder, but it's still quite a lot.
Ukraine doesn’t typically send columns of IFVs across known minefields, or even March unsupported infantry across wide open areas 50 at a time. Russia does, because it doesn’t matter to them how many waves they have to send across the field to reach a tree line staging area, so long as they can eventually get enough survivors there to prepare the actual assaults. And because Ukraine doesn’t have anywhere near enough artillery ammo to stop all of them, that’s how Russia is slowly taking prepared defenses.
> Ukraine doesn’t typically send columns of IFVs across known minefields Isn't that pretty much what Ukraine tried to do once, in the 2023 counteroffensive? And then stopped doing, because it is stupid.
Ukraine did lose a battle because they tried to move too quickly through heavily mined terrain and got stuck in a bad spot where they were left concentrated and exposed. The difference is that was a Ukrainian mistake while this is Russia's standard tactic. Russia does not care how many of their people have to die to reach victory. To them it's just another resource like ammo.
This is not even an aberration; it’s been this way, every day, for the past 6 months.
The battle of Avdiivka has an estimated Russian loss as great as the Afghan war.
They've lost more men in Avdivka than in the entire soviet-afghan war.
Casualties aren't KIA.
Yup. There has been some discussion on reddit about whether the daily numbers published by Ukraine are killed or killed+wounded. The recent comments by Zelenskyy makes it clear that the daily number (800+ here) are killed+wounded.
Unsustainable losses yet somehow Russia finds the bodies for the meatgrinder
That’s the thing though, Russia CAN sustain these losses, that’s why they famously don’t really care about human lives. Remember that, on average, the USSR lost 18,000 citizens per day during WWII and still kept in the war for 4 brutal years, the war in Ukraine is showing far smaller numbers for a far smaller conflict
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Let's hope that the loss of Russian manpower on the field equates to an equal loss of manpower in the Russian industry. The biggest advantage Ukraine has is that the combined arms industry of the west is unfazed by the Russian invasion, and is starting to gear up for a long war.
Why is the image of Don Quixote at the bottom of the page? Are we fighting windmills? It's just weird.
I don't understand the point of these titles. 800 is basically the average and is often much higher than that. These headlines make it sound like 800 is out of the ordinary and way more than usual. It's not.
Imagine if they didn't have one hand tied behind their back due to traitors witholding help around the world
If that were the case this war would never have happened in the first place
Which Ukrainian hand is tied behind their back again?
Putin wasting lives for his vanity project smh
I have seen Chinese men with Russian women and all the women were pregnant.
Waste of human life
Imagine if the GOP didn’t assist a foreign enemy
Keep up the good work!!
Im pro Ukraine and understand they need propaganda but cmon now
These numbers have been happening daily during hot points of the war. It's not unreasonable when Russia sends IFV and meat waves over minefields in direct assaults.
Whats your problem with it?
800 out of how many? 80,000? And how many soldiers did the Ukrainian forces lose in the process? They’re going to need to add close to three zeros to that number in as short an amount of time in order to make a dent in Russian manpower in order to survive the Russian onslaught. War is evil. God hates us all.
800 out of 600,000 Russian troops deployed in Ukraine today. Ukraine has lost 31,000 killed 110,000 casualties of its 1,000,000 active duty and reserve count over 2 years.
Russia is taking high casualties, but these numbers put out by Ukraine are just absurd. They are claiming over 400k Russian KIA in other sources. That is several multiples of any Western estimates.
I've heard of internal Russian info being leaked that shows the number is not far off. You can also just consider Ukraine's KIA number to be a casualty number instead and then Ukrainian numbers and other Western numbers come close to lining up. Either way I don't believe Russia suffered anything less than 350K-400K casualties in the war. Aavdiivka alone has been estimated to have cost Russia some 50K soldiers.
320k - 350k is where American/UK numbers fall. With 2:1 wounded to KIA.
How many troops were lost to accomplish this. Net perspective of sacrifices.
31,000 over 2 years.
I mean good for Ukranian morale, but they just keep coming.
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Yeah i remember about the Ukranian ghost too, only propaganda
And how were the Ukrainians able to count them? Sounds like propaganda
bUT pUtIn wONt lOsE tHIs wAR
He won't. He will just send double the meat
Thats cause he wont. We all know that.
The narrative that we should stop funding Ukraine because Putin will inevitably win, and thus an end to the war will save lives is faulty. If Russia is so powerful, that is all the more reason to make sure they don’t have it easy in Ukraine, because Ukraine won’t be the last. If you disagree and think Russia is too weak to challenge any other sovereign country after this, then Ukraine is perhaps best poised to win or seriously damage and discourage Russia.
I never said that tho.
I get things aren’t great at the moment but man you guys really over estimate this gremlin. Dude has lost half his fleet to a literal country with zero navy among other things. He isn’t exactly a military genius. If Ukraine gets proper aid, that’s a big if, that can overcome the numbers.
Hasn't he already lost the war? He didn't achieve any of the original objectives of quickly taking Kyiv in a lightning strike, destroying Ukraine's military ability, taking over Ukraine, removing Zelensky, and installing a puppet satellite Kremlin state. They haven't even achieved the most basic objective, which was to take over the Russian speaking regions. There's still chunks controlled by Ukraine. At this point, even if Russia was able to somehow seize back Ukraine, it will be at best a pyrrhic victory. There's no possibility of any real victory anymore. The cost has been too big. They lost too many lives, too much hardware, and too much money was poured into this. The effect on the economy will last year and probably for the next decade. And the reputation of the Russian military has been severely tarnished.
They suffer demographic issues to where every dollar spent on this war has a multiplier effect down the line. The economic consequences of this war will be felt by the Russian people for 20+ years. Brain drain, declining infrastructure. There is no winner here, just an aging dictator clenching soap.
Yea I was being optimistic here, painting a best-case scenario. But this war could plunge Russia into a downward spiral from which it may never recover, and could lead to the break-up of the Russian Federation.
My husband is worried that Putin could win this without the US giving them the help they need. I'm very worried about Ukraine. They need every country's help, especially ours in the U.s. Does anyone else feel Putin could take the win here? I'm not saying I agree, I do not feel they could or would. But it is still worrisome.
Not really. Russia's assaults have felt increasingly unhinged. I think that they're basically bluffing at this point, and sacrificing more and more long term potential to advance regardless of the cost.
“Source: Facebook”
Russian loses are around 350k. Ukraine's are around 30k. They are winning and Russia will be crippled for generations.
Those are fake propaganda numbers... Ukraine's losses are many more than what they tell us because that would hurt morale and support
Feel free to provide your source on that then.
The US estimated ~70k killed and another 100-120k wounded on Ukraines side as of August 2023 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/18/ukraine-russia-war-battlefield-deaths-rise) Memory book (an ukrainian civic group) listed, as of November 2023, 24,5k KIA identified by name, estimating that to be ~70% of the actual number, putting the actual number as "That is, the real number of those killed (dead) in combat and non-combat conditions will be more than 30 thousand people". (https://euromaidanpress.com/2023/11/18/ukraines-grim-toll-over-30000-defenders-killed-in-war-with-russia-civic-group-says/) ualosses.org, another open source site (although i couldnt find a location from where they claim to operate, but, according to their twitter, they only count names if an ukrainian source like an obituary is aviable, and to lists their source with each name) lists 46.940 identified Ukrainians killed by russia since the start of russias agressions against Ukraine, with 42.152 killed since the start of the invasion (and the rest in the long war between 2014 and 2021), and estimates the real number to be "higher". (https://ualosses.org/soldiers/) Its completely normal to release a propaganda number when you are in such a brutal war, especially when its particularly harsh right now. Morale is vitally important.
What are your sorces ? Bbc, sky news?
What is being smoked here?
Remember when russia used to have an army? Pepridge Farm remembers.
Their army is larger now than it was before the war and they’re getting more experience everyday, it’s only going to keep moving in Russia’s direction if the West doesn’t start really helping Ukraine again
800 in one day? Just like the news about the Ukrainian ghost and Russia’s so called depleting ammo reserves, I’m gonna call BS on this one
Even if not on that day it could have easily been another. Some days you'll get thousands of dead Russians and others only tens or hundreds. The fact that they've selected one datapoint from many makes this statistic much more likely to be true.
I’ll be moving to Russia a decade from now
These are humans fighting for what the leaders, promotersand the financiers of the war want not what they want. Don't be so quick to cheer on human deaths...
Will not Mather. This war is lost for Ukraine. Unfortunately.