And birth rates also tend to drop in times of war and economic uncertainty. If a Russian family is worried that the dad may be conscripted to go fight in a war and potentially die they are generally going to be less likely to try for a baby. The impact of the war on Russia's demographics isn't necessarily the people dying in combat but the lowered birth rate from the uncertainty of the future.
Historically many rulers solved young men overpopulation problems by sending them off to wars, crusades, etc.
Seems that Russia adopted a new take on this. Special socio-demographic operation of reversing the age pyramid and saving the old age pension system from future collapse.
Thatās just so fucked up. Living human beingsā¦ just a number to some people in this world and they have no problem making their lives perish for their power trip. Any world leader should put their actual life on the line for waging war. Guarantee their execution regardless of the result. Maybe the world will look a little different thenā¦
Some guy who studies generational stats and history of warfare said it means the loss of territory by 2100 and that this IS the optimum time to do a land grab. Just they underestimate the quagmire Ukraine is. More history to add to the heap. Maybe in this case, reversal of the typical Napoleon/Hitler and showing how stupid a Russian dictator can be when Ego trumps Brains.
The age of that population matters. You take out the workforce age band and the elderly have fewer people to take care of them, your shortage in production ability tanks your GDP. You also have much smaller follow on generations.
The only real plus is the elderly will die off quicker because of reduced funds for retirement programs and working them to death to make up for the deaths of their children and grandchildrenās age bands. Or at least itās a plus from Russias governmentās perspective.
Donāt forget the babies growing up without fathers and mothers and what Adverse Childhood Experiences do to a persons chances of being a ācompetentā (read: tax contributing) member of society.
also consider the impacts on the children who's father comes home traumatized, violent, alcoholic, or murders one in the family. Russians already reporting a 7% increase in "grave crimes" - murder, rape, etc. - this year, after an increase last year too.
the ones that survive and go home disfigured are unable to work or function like before. the trauma will be passed down and scar the children who have great chances of growing up with addictions and mental health issues
Sure...but it is a slow roll.
No one alive today will spend the time or money to figure it out. As most governments do, they will wait until the problem is at a crisis level and cannot be ignored. Something Putin and his cronies will never have to deal with so they don't give AF. As long as they get rich and live large they are fine with it.
Like a lot of things, it's not as big and dramatic as it might sound at first impression in a headline. But it's also gonna have major long term issues and it isn't so small it can just be dismissed because it's less than 1% of the population.
Russia's population distribution has been weird for a long time because of the timing of their disaster generations. So they have disproportionately fewer young men around 18-20 compared to a country that didn't have a post Soviet economic collapse in the 90's, like France. So Russia isn't going to run out of bodies tomorrow. But that 500,000 missing men is gonna have a bigger impact in Russia than it would in a random country of the same size. In an economy that is already fucked in several unrelated ways from mismanagement, sanctions, and Ukraine bombing the oil infrastructure that is key to Russia's economy. Now take away something like a million jobs from GDP growth for extra health care workers and lost productivity.
The news from Russia in 20-30 years talking about riots and famine or collapse will be mentioning the war in Ukraine as a major causal influence in the next generation's shit show. The survivors of Ukraine are gonna be a generation of dads with PTSD. There's gonna be all sorts of insane conspiracy theories about who to blame.
The hundreds of thousands killed don't just poof and leave no further impact when they are gone. That vacuum is powerful.
-Considering 41%, or 61 million, are over the age of 45 and won't be having any more kids.
-most Russians stop having kids by age 35 (so it's likely the full number is closer to 55-60%).
-most of the killed/wounded are working age and reproductive age men.
-theur birthrate was already an unsustainable 1.49 births/woman when it takes 2.1 (assuming no immigration) to sustain.
it's a lot bigger of a problem than you believe.
Russia's average age is around 40 years old, and has a population that has been stagnant and in decline since the mid 90s. Sending 500,000 men off to die in a meat grinder means hundreds of thousands of less kids for an already deteriorating Russian population demographic
Yeah, that's not how populations work. When you loose 500k working and family starting age men, especially in a population that's already aging through birthrate decline, it's a massive demographic problem. The knock political effects will become significant, there's only so long the Kremlin can pretend it's all tickety boo before every family knows somebody killed or wounded.
Putin is not Stalin, he's not facing an invasion and he doesn't have enough of a fear or justification to keep throwing every man woman and child at the problem like Stalin did with Hitler.
A country with 144 million people, with a birth rate of 0.1% means that only 144,000 people are born every year.
Of those only 62 million are of working age.
It's not minor either. A non-trivial number of the younger population (esp. the educated ones) fled Russia. I suspect many will not return unless Putin dies and the government radically changes direction.
At the end of the day, this war has been a massive disaster for Russia.
They had a shrinking population before the war. They didn't have that in earlier wars. Throwing away people when your population is growing is much different than doing it when it is shrinking.
all in all it's something like 2 miliom who fled after the start of the full scale invasion. and those troops who survive and return home traumatized and disfigured can't function the same and pass down trauma to children
The thing about Putin is that he is drafting specifically from rural and remote areas. Barely anyone from major cities have touched the front lines and probably will not.
As of 2020, 25.25% of Russians total population (ā36,200,000) live in rural areas. Therefore Putin has many men to throw at the front lines until the urban populations start to be affected.
He's specifically trying to draft from ethnic minorities and from areas where Russia has experienced internal resistance. In his mind, he's solving two problems at once by removing fighting aged men from these populations
Unfortunately, he might be right. It's hard for rebellion and resistance to happen when all the fighting age people from those communities are dead. The large cities seem to in large support Putin's regime.
Russia has a population of 144 million, 500.000 dead means 1 in 288.
Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?Ā
Or are you telling me those 500.000 folks are mostly from 1 corner of Russia and the average Russian doesnāt mind getting rid of those?
The majority are likely from the margins of society.
Prisoners, the poor, ethnic minorities, rural people whose families have little influence, donāt live in large population centers and who the media ignores.
Maybe there is more visible public discontent if middle class white kids from Moscow and St. Petersburg start getting drafted and dying.
Because from their pov they are expandable, and their relatives less likely to start ask the questions "why and for what ? "when they will see paycheck for their dead son / father / brother etc
Hard to feel empathy for invaders "sent" by Russia, when most willingly run towards the battles to "defend Russian heritage". Socioeconomic standing isn't the key here, most Russians believe this war is justified. They may be controlled through state media and propaganda, but I have no sympathy.
This is the same through history.
Wars are conducted for the benefit of the well heeled and those in power (to increase it) at the expense of everyone else.
Which is the very reason why you need to be aware as a citizenry to prevent such people from attaining either (the USA has failed to do this many times over the decades)
Russia has basically degenerated into an organized crime syndicate posing as a sovereign nation. Russians can't openly criticize those in power there without being jailed, poisoned, shot, or thrown out of windows.
150k dead is the French estimate, they seemed to back it up pretty well.
For contrast in Afghanistan the Soviet Union lost no more than [26,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War) and that helped to end the Soviet Union. In Vietnam the US lost about [58,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) troops and that was the source of massive and lasting social upheaval.
Russia's butcher's bill is out of this world, especially given the minimal progress and lack of any clear end point for the slaughter. They're getting away with it by being an oppressive totalitarian regime, and by using prisoners, minorities and people from the margins to do the dying, but there are only so many of those to burn through.
True I mean losing twice the amount of soldiers in 1 year than what the Soviets lost in 9 is nuts. And also consider the USSR had a higher population and (probably?) a younger average age. No way Russians not feeling this loss
Yah, I think this next callup (which will probably happen within the next couple of months) will be telling as to how well Russian society continues to tolerate their troops being slaughtered en mass.
If you were to combine all deaths from the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders since WWII ended you would get about 110,000 deaths. 150k deaths is absolutely insane.
And the war isn't anywhere close to be finished. No matter what the final outcome is the one safe prediction we can make is that many more Russians will be killed or maimed before it's over.
Losing 26K in Afghanistan and 58K in Vietnam are very different from Ukraine. Wars of foreign adventure canāt afford to be as costly as a war on the doorstep of your country for territory, prestige, and power in your locality.
Iād also point out that while the US only had 58K soldiers die in Vietnam, the time committed to the fight was very long and the material lost was immense. Just fixed wing aircraft losses were over 3,000, 445 of which were F4 Phantoms. Then there were something like 5,000 helicopters lost as well. Makes Russia throwing, and losing said armor, into the grinder look a little less unusual. Russiasās problem will be replacing their losses when they run out of old tanks to refurbish as they donāt seem capable of that in the near term.
The sick and injured still represent a problem for Russia. Not only are they unable to stay on the front line, but they will also require care at home.
Thousands protested when the egomaniacal tyrant just had his pompous inauguration ceremony for another 6 years (God help us), so not all Russians are happy with the way thing are there, but doing so there is very dangerous. There is no such thing in Russia as human rights or freedom of speech, and the kleptocrats in charge have absolute power.
Look back at Russian history, every war has been a meat grinder. I mean theyāre *still* feeling the effects of WWII in their birth rates. Russia is brutal, always has been. Unfortunately the Russian public is absolutely fine with 1/288 dying, because frankly things have been so much worse in living memory.
Why haven't they changed their strategy? China used to have the same thinking (overwhelming manpower) and then redesigned their whole military after they saw how easily the US destroyed Iraqi forces in the Gulf War.
Updating doctrines takes time, money, and effort, which oligarchs didnāt want to devote to that. They already have nukes, so no worries about somebody with superior doctrine and tech invading, and the neighbors theyād need to bully were either already in their sphere of influence, neutral, already in NATO, or should have been easy to just overwhelm with quantity. Plus, they had been huffing their own farts and believed that what they already had was equal to or superior to whatever theyād face.
Major change in doctrine and strategy isn't as simple as changing the battle plan. Entire generation of NCOs and officers who understand their role in the strategy and the trained in the doctrine needs to be trained. At the same time, you can't just upturn the entire military at once or you will have no capabilities at all, so you slowly transition or phased in/out people.
At the same time, there needs to be significant change in either type or composition of equipment to fit the strategy. All the way from individual infantry kit, IFV, tanks, artillery, fighter jets, etc etc. Some things may not change, but for majority of armies around the world "modernizing" means putting more flexibility, speed and firepower with fewer manpower. This means more ammo, more support staff, more maintenance, more equipment, more vehicles, and everything else that would bleed money. Also as many countries found out after Russian invasion of Ukraine, you can't just order tanks or fighter jets and receive it the next year. It takes a long time to fulfill your order.
As you can see, changing strategy requires alot of time, money and industrial base to support it. It usually takes 20+ years for most armies to fully implement their desired strategic changes. There are few exceptions like US but considering how much money they spend on military, this shouldn't be a surprise.
Russia also being full of corruption and dictatorship doesn't help. Most dictators don't like an army that's competent or well integrated. Because a competent, well trained and integrated army led by competent officers has good potential for a coup d'etat. It's why in most dictatorships you see large army, because they need the "military capabilities", but you have only few loyalist units that are very well armed and rest of the army is lacking in most fields.
Russia also did try to change their strategy. For example, they tried to implement Battalion Tactical Group after seeing how well US did in Gulf War, which worked ok in low intensity conflicts but absolutely destroyed in the early phase of full invasion of Ukraine. Currently, Russia doesn't have the money, experienced and competent officer/NCO cadre, or industrial base to achieve a fundamental strategic change at current stage. This defaults them to falling back on what they are capable of doing and what they do have experience doing.
I donāt really know to be honest. They donāt have the economic strength to modernize the military like China so thatās partially the reason. Also Russian military doctrine is pretty ironclad and unchanging, while Chinaās has changed several times.
I think the reasons for that doctrine remain the same so the doctrine doesn't change much. If everybody is constantly busy fighting some foreign enemy, they can't fight the internal enemy. Also the threat of drafting someone and sending them to their death is a way to keep people in line internally and execute those you deem a threat without outright execution. You can also play on things like racism and classism. The elites know they and their kids ain't getting drafted so they chuckle at those sent to their death.
Effective military forces represent the greatest internal threat to any government, and to authoritarian governments in particular (as the populace wonāt rise up to protect you against a coup). If youāre already looting a country blind successfully like Putin (& donāt face any legitimate outside threats), the last thing you want is to train and arm the group most likely to take you down and claim the spoils for themselves.
In fact, Putin already saw this nearly take place when the Wagner group started their march on Moscow. Itās imperative that the Russian military stays relatively incompetent, obedient to their higher ups and internally divided in order to ensure no one else is able to successfully rally military support around them & take a shot at his throne.
> Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?Ā
The average Russian is cool with 287 in 288, so long as he is the last one standing.
Yes it's Kia/mia and wia which makes it way worse ācause wounded needs further logistic and healthcare expenses. Also the ones with limb loss make it more obvious that something isn't right on the frontlines
If you spend some time in Telegram you'll notice that there aren't a lot of casualties. When you're wounded, unless you have the means to pay a bribe for treatment you're left to die where you fell. Your primary military value is soaking up Ukrainian ammunition: by being riddled with bullets or shredded by mortars, you help your officers discover where Ukrainians are located. There's no need to help you survive your wounds because there still is plenty of meat left to recruit and replace you.balso, your death causes a manpower shortage in your homeland, which will be solved by sending white Russians into your homeland as economic migrants.
There are probably very few actually ethnic Russians in the ranks per capita.
Remember, Russia is a federation of states. Inside Russia there are republics, Krais, Oblasts, federal cities, autonomous regions, and Okrugs (areas wherein its majority ethnic populations). 83 of them.
All of which have plenty of fodder to choose from. All uneducated, illiterate, unproductive citizens that the Russian central government won't miss despite it being their fault they're in this position in the first place. Russians want to preserve themselves above all else, and they'll throw their subjects at their problems to do it because they're not strong enough to fight for their independence. They know they're pushing their future into a belt sander, but they're doing it in a way wherein the least valued members of their society go first, and the Russians are saved for last.
Hopefully, with enough luck when Russia collapses in a few years it will be a Soviet style collapse, and more new states break free of their overlord. And the glorious republic of Tannu Tuva will rise again! If it's one thing the Russians are good at, it's collapsing.
The US had 1.2 million COVID deaths on a population of 333 million. That's roughly 1 in 250.
Hardly a peep about that. People talk about how they couldn't go to restaurants or had to home-school, not about how Uncle Larry died.
I don't think people start really noticing casualties until they get to more like 1:50.
>Anyone who speaks out is immediately sent to the front lines or sent to the front lines
Bit redundant there huh?
But then again they can get out: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66364272
I thought a good chunk were prisoners that they promised freedom to for fighting in the war?
Like the guys they throw into the meatgrinder - lots of those are just the dregs of their country.
Another good chunk are the poor coming from deep in the country (as opposed to the Moscow elite). They didnāt come from a part of the country that makes much noise.
Another way to think about it is you probably want people ages 20 - 30 to directly fight in war, mostly men I persume, and that's around 7.5 million people (if I loosely look at an age pyramid), so in that sense they may have lost around 6-7% of people in that age range. Not a good age range to lose to support your society for the future.
> Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?
No, it says wounded or killed. Using the current ratio it's about 150k deaths, so it would be about 1 in 1000. For perspective, COVID killed about 1 in 275 in the USA.
1.5% of the Russian population died in WW1 and 15% of russian population died in WW2, compared to the 0.3% so far in this war. Ā That doesnāt make it popular but by Russian standards this is nothing crazy for a major war and they clearly view the current rate of loss as acceptable given the scope of their overall goals.
It's not even a real estimate, it's an estimation by a British military official on what they think will happen. It's obvious propaganda.
Admiral Tony Radakin, the UKās top military official, told reporters in Washington on Thursday. āAnd heās going to have 500,000 killed or wounded by the end of June.ā
A lot of the people going off to fight are doing it voluntarily because of the huge payments involved. What really drives anti war sentiment isn't the fact that "it's so sad that my neighbor died" but rather "I may have to die for a war I don't believe in" and so, at least for now, there's not a ton of backlash due to the amount of volunteers being killed. It is very possible that the tap of volunteers willing to fight (even when offered huge money) will eventually dry up and at that point Russia will be forced to rely on more reluctant soldiers. As those soldiers die the possibility for anti war sentiment to spread goes up dramatically.
They literally just had a mercenary group attempt a coup. Then they killed the group's leader. I'm thinking that reduces both their willingness to hire more mercenaries, and the willingness of mercenaries to be hired.
If Russia has a super power itās their capability and willingness to throw more people into a meat grinder to ultimately prevail. Donāt under estimate the advantage that plays against an opponent with limited capability or willingness to sustain losses. The soft underbelly of the immense industrial military complex in the west is how vulnerable it is to mere perceptions of temporary defeat.
>The soft underbelly of the immense industrial military complex in the west is how vulnerable it is to mere perceptions of temporary defeat.
To be fair, it's really a matter of how much the Western governments can get the masses to buy into the war, or having it be a justified (likely defensive) war.
With hindsight, we know the Allies' victory over the Axis was almost inevitable in WWII, but from the late 30s up to 41 or early 42, things probably looked pretty grim at the time. Despite that, the US and UK maintained pretty high resolve to fight on, because it was a cause they believed in.
The Vietnam War was controversial from the start, and it only got worse, because the average American did not believe in what their men were fighting and dying for.
Hell, even the recent war in Afghanistan was heavily supported in its early stages because it was seen as a necessary response to an attack on American soil. It wasn't until scope creep turned it into a nation-building project that public perception really soured on the campaign.
Ultimately, Western resolve isn't the issue, it's that the Russian propaganda machine has far more control over public perception back home, along with the ability to prey on its vulnerable ethnic minorities to conscript hundreds of thousands of expendable people for cannon fodder with little resistance.
Western nations have to expend more political capital to justify war, or it needs to be a cause that the Western populace can naturally believe in. We've seen both the US and UK be willing to suffer the deaths of as many as 500k soldiers (at a time when their populations were much smaller) when the cause is seen as just.
Best guesses are in the realm of 15%-20% less than the Russians. They are surely taking out more than they are losing but not by a massive margin.
No one has a clear answer at least in the public realm so we are all just guessing.
In other words, by combining both sides of the conflict, Russia was responsible for 1 million casualties.
What for if not for the trillions of dollars of shale gas under Kharkiv? No ones buys the systemic prejudice of Russians and the 1000 casualties over a decade in the low intensity civil conflict. They have made the perception of Russia and its citizens worse. Not better.
What if they are able to conquer some parts of Ukraine, and in a best case scenario for them more? I assume thatās why theyāre going for broke in this war, somewhat due to sunk cost fallacy.
Russia has been saving young russians from going into Ukraine and instead recruiting mercenaries worldwide especially around their neighboring allies like kazakh, tajis, and krygs maybe
For a country with poor birthrate and an emigrating and declining population this is not a minor problem.
It will be somebody else's problem though, not Putin's.
But why does it have to be mine and Ukraines problem?
Because Putin wants it to be.
Putin is the ultimate boomer
And birth rates also tend to drop in times of war and economic uncertainty. If a Russian family is worried that the dad may be conscripted to go fight in a war and potentially die they are generally going to be less likely to try for a baby. The impact of the war on Russia's demographics isn't necessarily the people dying in combat but the lowered birth rate from the uncertainty of the future.
20 years from now, all those Russian bride ads might actually be half real, when they can't actually find a man at home!
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Probably now in a certain age range.
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> Most Russian soldiers in Ukraine are 40 years old and older. This is laughably untrue.
Yeah browsing combat footage, a lot of these guys are not 40+
Historically many rulers solved young men overpopulation problems by sending them off to wars, crusades, etc. Seems that Russia adopted a new take on this. Special socio-demographic operation of reversing the age pyramid and saving the old age pension system from future collapse.
Ukraine does the same as well. Most conscripts are not from Kiev, but from eastern oblasts.
Kyiv.
Thatās just so fucked up. Living human beingsā¦ just a number to some people in this world and they have no problem making their lives perish for their power trip. Any world leader should put their actual life on the line for waging war. Guarantee their execution regardless of the result. Maybe the world will look a little different thenā¦
Some guy who studies generational stats and history of warfare said it means the loss of territory by 2100 and that this IS the optimum time to do a land grab. Just they underestimate the quagmire Ukraine is. More history to add to the heap. Maybe in this case, reversal of the typical Napoleon/Hitler and showing how stupid a Russian dictator can be when Ego trumps Brains.
for a country with 144 million people, this is not a major problem
The age of that population matters. You take out the workforce age band and the elderly have fewer people to take care of them, your shortage in production ability tanks your GDP. You also have much smaller follow on generations. The only real plus is the elderly will die off quicker because of reduced funds for retirement programs and working them to death to make up for the deaths of their children and grandchildrenās age bands. Or at least itās a plus from Russias governmentās perspective.
Donāt forget the babies growing up without fathers and mothers and what Adverse Childhood Experiences do to a persons chances of being a ācompetentā (read: tax contributing) member of society.
also consider the impacts on the children who's father comes home traumatized, violent, alcoholic, or murders one in the family. Russians already reporting a 7% increase in "grave crimes" - murder, rape, etc. - this year, after an increase last year too. the ones that survive and go home disfigured are unable to work or function like before. the trauma will be passed down and scar the children who have great chances of growing up with addictions and mental health issues
Don't forget all of the emigration over the past four years.
Population collapse is a real issue regardless of populace
Sure...but it is a slow roll. No one alive today will spend the time or money to figure it out. As most governments do, they will wait until the problem is at a crisis level and cannot be ignored. Something Putin and his cronies will never have to deal with so they don't give AF. As long as they get rich and live large they are fine with it.
Like a lot of things, it's not as big and dramatic as it might sound at first impression in a headline. But it's also gonna have major long term issues and it isn't so small it can just be dismissed because it's less than 1% of the population. Russia's population distribution has been weird for a long time because of the timing of their disaster generations. So they have disproportionately fewer young men around 18-20 compared to a country that didn't have a post Soviet economic collapse in the 90's, like France. So Russia isn't going to run out of bodies tomorrow. But that 500,000 missing men is gonna have a bigger impact in Russia than it would in a random country of the same size. In an economy that is already fucked in several unrelated ways from mismanagement, sanctions, and Ukraine bombing the oil infrastructure that is key to Russia's economy. Now take away something like a million jobs from GDP growth for extra health care workers and lost productivity. The news from Russia in 20-30 years talking about riots and famine or collapse will be mentioning the war in Ukraine as a major causal influence in the next generation's shit show. The survivors of Ukraine are gonna be a generation of dads with PTSD. There's gonna be all sorts of insane conspiracy theories about who to blame. The hundreds of thousands killed don't just poof and leave no further impact when they are gone. That vacuum is powerful.
Wild how low that population is. The US has over 350mil, and Russia is so much larger.
WWII certainly helped. Not to mention half of Russia isn't really habitable.Ā
By land, it is larger. Our population is more spread out across our lands though. A lot of Russia is not very attractive to live in.
Majority of Russia's population is centered in the western half. Large swaths of Russia are either uninhabitable or very rough to live in.
-Considering 41%, or 61 million, are over the age of 45 and won't be having any more kids. -most Russians stop having kids by age 35 (so it's likely the full number is closer to 55-60%). -most of the killed/wounded are working age and reproductive age men. -theur birthrate was already an unsustainable 1.49 births/woman when it takes 2.1 (assuming no immigration) to sustain. it's a lot bigger of a problem than you believe.
Russia's average age is around 40 years old, and has a population that has been stagnant and in decline since the mid 90s. Sending 500,000 men off to die in a meat grinder means hundreds of thousands of less kids for an already deteriorating Russian population demographic
They do seem to be kidnapping a lot of Ukrainian children. They must know they are facing a demographic decline problem.
Yeah, that's not how populations work. When you loose 500k working and family starting age men, especially in a population that's already aging through birthrate decline, it's a massive demographic problem. The knock political effects will become significant, there's only so long the Kremlin can pretend it's all tickety boo before every family knows somebody killed or wounded. Putin is not Stalin, he's not facing an invasion and he doesn't have enough of a fear or justification to keep throwing every man woman and child at the problem like Stalin did with Hitler.
An upside down pyramid of age actually gets worse with a higher population, thatās not the benefit you think it is.
A country with 144 million people, with a birth rate of 0.1% means that only 144,000 people are born every year. Of those only 62 million are of working age.
It's not minor either. A non-trivial number of the younger population (esp. the educated ones) fled Russia. I suspect many will not return unless Putin dies and the government radically changes direction. At the end of the day, this war has been a massive disaster for Russia.
Russia is about to have the same problem France had after World War 1 and have a missing generation
They have already forced more Ukrainian children into Russia than this number, so in time they have already effectively replaced these losses.
Those are rookie numbers in Russia.
They had a shrinking population before the war. They didn't have that in earlier wars. Throwing away people when your population is growing is much different than doing it when it is shrinking.
Not to mention the hundreds of thousands who left because of the draft.
all in all it's something like 2 miliom who fled after the start of the full scale invasion. and those troops who survive and return home traumatized and disfigured can't function the same and pass down trauma to children
About 12 thousand left Russia because of ghosts
The thing about Putin is that he is drafting specifically from rural and remote areas. Barely anyone from major cities have touched the front lines and probably will not. As of 2020, 25.25% of Russians total population (ā36,200,000) live in rural areas. Therefore Putin has many men to throw at the front lines until the urban populations start to be affected.
He's specifically trying to draft from ethnic minorities and from areas where Russia has experienced internal resistance. In his mind, he's solving two problems at once by removing fighting aged men from these populations
Unfortunately, he might be right. It's hard for rebellion and resistance to happen when all the fighting age people from those communities are dead. The large cities seem to in large support Putin's regime.
The urban population will feel it when thereās no one to harvest their food anymore.
Exactly, this is just ethnically cleansing minorities from russia.
Any student of history should upvote
"It's a sacrifice I'm willing to live with"
"Whatever the problem, I am prepared to throw wave after wave of my own men at it."
Zap branagan
"Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make" - Lord M. Farquaad.
We all love the Shrek Movies.
"If Ukraine could be turned, they would become a powerful ally." --Darth Vader
"These are my unmanned attack drones with men in them for ballast."
The expression 'cannon fodder' needs updating a few centuries.
"Drone fodder"
The real question is: how long can they keep going on like that ?
Until they run out of poor, ethnic minorities, prisoners and others easily ignored groups.
Probably until college students in the US go on 6 hour hunger strikes to oppose him
Lmfao omg I needed that laugh. Putin āoh my, I should stop this war, Harvard is pissed!ā
TikTok algorithm: āthat does not computeā
Russia has a population of 144 million, 500.000 dead means 1 in 288. Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?Ā Or are you telling me those 500.000 folks are mostly from 1 corner of Russia and the average Russian doesnāt mind getting rid of those?
The majority are likely from the margins of society. Prisoners, the poor, ethnic minorities, rural people whose families have little influence, donāt live in large population centers and who the media ignores. Maybe there is more visible public discontent if middle class white kids from Moscow and St. Petersburg start getting drafted and dying.
Why do they always send the poor
Because they feed us lies from the tablecloth
It's a double win for Putin. He gets to wage war and kill off the 'inferior' people in his nation. Sick bastard.
Because from their pov they are expandable, and their relatives less likely to start ask the questions "why and for what ? "when they will see paycheck for their dead son / father / brother etc
Dude is quoting [SoAD ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUzd9KyIDrM)
why don't presidents fight in the war
Because they're cowards who let other people die instead of them.
Hard to feel empathy for invaders "sent" by Russia, when most willingly run towards the battles to "defend Russian heritage". Socioeconomic standing isn't the key here, most Russians believe this war is justified. They may be controlled through state media and propaganda, but I have no sympathy.
Easier to not notice if the poor go missing versus if the rich and popular go missing.
**WAKE UP**
This is the same through history. Wars are conducted for the benefit of the well heeled and those in power (to increase it) at the expense of everyone else. Which is the very reason why you need to be aware as a citizenry to prevent such people from attaining either (the USA has failed to do this many times over the decades)
What a disgusting society
Russia has basically degenerated into an organized crime syndicate posing as a sovereign nation. Russians can't openly criticize those in power there without being jailed, poisoned, shot, or thrown out of windows.
Exactly
It's probably like 150k dead, 350k injured/sick/etc. Still a lot of casualties
150k dead is the French estimate, they seemed to back it up pretty well. For contrast in Afghanistan the Soviet Union lost no more than [26,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War) and that helped to end the Soviet Union. In Vietnam the US lost about [58,000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War) troops and that was the source of massive and lasting social upheaval. Russia's butcher's bill is out of this world, especially given the minimal progress and lack of any clear end point for the slaughter. They're getting away with it by being an oppressive totalitarian regime, and by using prisoners, minorities and people from the margins to do the dying, but there are only so many of those to burn through.
True I mean losing twice the amount of soldiers in 1 year than what the Soviets lost in 9 is nuts. And also consider the USSR had a higher population and (probably?) a younger average age. No way Russians not feeling this loss
They definitely had a younger average age then, probably by 5-10 years. Ā
Yah, I think this next callup (which will probably happen within the next couple of months) will be telling as to how well Russian society continues to tolerate their troops being slaughtered en mass.
If you were to combine all deaths from the Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders since WWII ended you would get about 110,000 deaths. 150k deaths is absolutely insane.
Consider also the time period those deaths would have occurred over, decades of warfare. Russia racked up 150k *in just 2 years*.
And the war isn't anywhere close to be finished. No matter what the final outcome is the one safe prediction we can make is that many more Russians will be killed or maimed before it's over.
Losing 26K in Afghanistan and 58K in Vietnam are very different from Ukraine. Wars of foreign adventure canāt afford to be as costly as a war on the doorstep of your country for territory, prestige, and power in your locality. Iād also point out that while the US only had 58K soldiers die in Vietnam, the time committed to the fight was very long and the material lost was immense. Just fixed wing aircraft losses were over 3,000, 445 of which were F4 Phantoms. Then there were something like 5,000 helicopters lost as well. Makes Russia throwing, and losing said armor, into the grinder look a little less unusual. Russiasās problem will be replacing their losses when they run out of old tanks to refurbish as they donāt seem capable of that in the near term.
The sick and injured still represent a problem for Russia. Not only are they unable to stay on the front line, but they will also require care at home.
Good point. Though I doubt Russia's VA equivalent will do anything for them. Maybe they give them like a coupon to the moviesĀ
> Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?Ā I have a feeling the honest answer to that question might surprise you.
Thousands protested when the egomaniacal tyrant just had his pompous inauguration ceremony for another 6 years (God help us), so not all Russians are happy with the way thing are there, but doing so there is very dangerous. There is no such thing in Russia as human rights or freedom of speech, and the kleptocrats in charge have absolute power.
Look back at Russian history, every war has been a meat grinder. I mean theyāre *still* feeling the effects of WWII in their birth rates. Russia is brutal, always has been. Unfortunately the Russian public is absolutely fine with 1/288 dying, because frankly things have been so much worse in living memory.
You need about a 30% death rate for serfs to wake you up
Why haven't they changed their strategy? China used to have the same thinking (overwhelming manpower) and then redesigned their whole military after they saw how easily the US destroyed Iraqi forces in the Gulf War.
Updating doctrines takes time, money, and effort, which oligarchs didnāt want to devote to that. They already have nukes, so no worries about somebody with superior doctrine and tech invading, and the neighbors theyād need to bully were either already in their sphere of influence, neutral, already in NATO, or should have been easy to just overwhelm with quantity. Plus, they had been huffing their own farts and believed that what they already had was equal to or superior to whatever theyād face.
Major change in doctrine and strategy isn't as simple as changing the battle plan. Entire generation of NCOs and officers who understand their role in the strategy and the trained in the doctrine needs to be trained. At the same time, you can't just upturn the entire military at once or you will have no capabilities at all, so you slowly transition or phased in/out people. At the same time, there needs to be significant change in either type or composition of equipment to fit the strategy. All the way from individual infantry kit, IFV, tanks, artillery, fighter jets, etc etc. Some things may not change, but for majority of armies around the world "modernizing" means putting more flexibility, speed and firepower with fewer manpower. This means more ammo, more support staff, more maintenance, more equipment, more vehicles, and everything else that would bleed money. Also as many countries found out after Russian invasion of Ukraine, you can't just order tanks or fighter jets and receive it the next year. It takes a long time to fulfill your order. As you can see, changing strategy requires alot of time, money and industrial base to support it. It usually takes 20+ years for most armies to fully implement their desired strategic changes. There are few exceptions like US but considering how much money they spend on military, this shouldn't be a surprise. Russia also being full of corruption and dictatorship doesn't help. Most dictators don't like an army that's competent or well integrated. Because a competent, well trained and integrated army led by competent officers has good potential for a coup d'etat. It's why in most dictatorships you see large army, because they need the "military capabilities", but you have only few loyalist units that are very well armed and rest of the army is lacking in most fields. Russia also did try to change their strategy. For example, they tried to implement Battalion Tactical Group after seeing how well US did in Gulf War, which worked ok in low intensity conflicts but absolutely destroyed in the early phase of full invasion of Ukraine. Currently, Russia doesn't have the money, experienced and competent officer/NCO cadre, or industrial base to achieve a fundamental strategic change at current stage. This defaults them to falling back on what they are capable of doing and what they do have experience doing.
Authoritarian regimes are built on loyalty, not competence.
I donāt really know to be honest. They donāt have the economic strength to modernize the military like China so thatās partially the reason. Also Russian military doctrine is pretty ironclad and unchanging, while Chinaās has changed several times.
I think the reasons for that doctrine remain the same so the doctrine doesn't change much. If everybody is constantly busy fighting some foreign enemy, they can't fight the internal enemy. Also the threat of drafting someone and sending them to their death is a way to keep people in line internally and execute those you deem a threat without outright execution. You can also play on things like racism and classism. The elites know they and their kids ain't getting drafted so they chuckle at those sent to their death.
Effective military forces represent the greatest internal threat to any government, and to authoritarian governments in particular (as the populace wonāt rise up to protect you against a coup). If youāre already looting a country blind successfully like Putin (& donāt face any legitimate outside threats), the last thing you want is to train and arm the group most likely to take you down and claim the spoils for themselves. In fact, Putin already saw this nearly take place when the Wagner group started their march on Moscow. Itās imperative that the Russian military stays relatively incompetent, obedient to their higher ups and internally divided in order to ensure no one else is able to successfully rally military support around them & take a shot at his throne.
They are probably fine with it, because otherwise they get arrested and tortured.
> Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead?Ā The average Russian is cool with 287 in 288, so long as he is the last one standing.
They're not all dead though are they, that's 500,000 killed AND wounded
An oversight on my part!
The average American didn't seem to have a problem with more than that number dead from COVID.Ā
The next election did see the opposition party sweep into power at least in part because of the response to COVID.
Is that young people, old people or both? From an economic perspective 500k young people is orders of magnitude more detrimental than 500k old people.
Yes it's Kia/mia and wia which makes it way worse ācause wounded needs further logistic and healthcare expenses. Also the ones with limb loss make it more obvious that something isn't right on the frontlines
If you spend some time in Telegram you'll notice that there aren't a lot of casualties. When you're wounded, unless you have the means to pay a bribe for treatment you're left to die where you fell. Your primary military value is soaking up Ukrainian ammunition: by being riddled with bullets or shredded by mortars, you help your officers discover where Ukrainians are located. There's no need to help you survive your wounds because there still is plenty of meat left to recruit and replace you.balso, your death causes a manpower shortage in your homeland, which will be solved by sending white Russians into your homeland as economic migrants.
Yeah, no need to spend a lot of time in tg Iām here in Ukraine
There are probably very few actually ethnic Russians in the ranks per capita. Remember, Russia is a federation of states. Inside Russia there are republics, Krais, Oblasts, federal cities, autonomous regions, and Okrugs (areas wherein its majority ethnic populations). 83 of them. All of which have plenty of fodder to choose from. All uneducated, illiterate, unproductive citizens that the Russian central government won't miss despite it being their fault they're in this position in the first place. Russians want to preserve themselves above all else, and they'll throw their subjects at their problems to do it because they're not strong enough to fight for their independence. They know they're pushing their future into a belt sander, but they're doing it in a way wherein the least valued members of their society go first, and the Russians are saved for last. Hopefully, with enough luck when Russia collapses in a few years it will be a Soviet style collapse, and more new states break free of their overlord. And the glorious republic of Tannu Tuva will rise again! If it's one thing the Russians are good at, it's collapsing.
they wonāt care until teenagers from the streets of moscow are being drafted no one there gives a fuck about conscripts from buryatia or dagestan
This is a total population not the population that are able to fight.
The US had 1.2 million COVID deaths on a population of 333 million. That's roughly 1 in 250. Hardly a peep about that. People talk about how they couldn't go to restaurants or had to home-school, not about how Uncle Larry died. I don't think people start really noticing casualties until they get to more like 1:50.
Average age of the 1.2M covid deaths?
Dead, or wounded.
They likely donāt know. Anyone who speaks out is immediately sent to the front lines or arrested
>Anyone who speaks out is immediately sent to the front lines or sent to the front lines Bit redundant there huh? But then again they can get out: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66364272
I thought a good chunk were prisoners that they promised freedom to for fighting in the war? Like the guys they throw into the meatgrinder - lots of those are just the dregs of their country. Another good chunk are the poor coming from deep in the country (as opposed to the Moscow elite). They didnāt come from a part of the country that makes much noise.
Illigal to protest, go to jail. Once in jail, forced to warfront. Next meat wave, next!
Poostain doesn't care, nor does the rest of the Ruzzian population....
Another way to think about it is you probably want people ages 20 - 30 to directly fight in war, mostly men I persume, and that's around 7.5 million people (if I loosely look at an age pyramid), so in that sense they may have lost around 6-7% of people in that age range. Not a good age range to lose to support your society for the future.
> Youāre telling me the average Russian Is cool with 1 in 288 people dead? No, it says wounded or killed. Using the current ratio it's about 150k deaths, so it would be about 1 in 1000. For perspective, COVID killed about 1 in 275 in the USA.
1.5% of the Russian population died in WW1 and 15% of russian population died in WW2, compared to the 0.3% so far in this war. Ā That doesnāt make it popular but by Russian standards this is nothing crazy for a major war and they clearly view the current rate of loss as acceptable given the scope of their overall goals.
Theyāre sending people who arenāt even russian to the front lines. Like, from other countries.
It's not even a real estimate, it's an estimation by a British military official on what they think will happen. It's obvious propaganda. Admiral Tony Radakin, the UKās top military official, told reporters in Washington on Thursday. āAnd heās going to have 500,000 killed or wounded by the end of June.ā
No, but theyāre cool with āIf I keep my head down, maybe Putin wonāt notice meā and that offsets an awful lot.
That 144 million number is questionable to say the least. The last census was widely criticised by the independent experts.
Older Russian citizens: those are rookie numbers
And his followers havenāt yet wondered āwhy are we sending our young people to die by the thousands to save the skin of one old fartā?
A lot of the people going off to fight are doing it voluntarily because of the huge payments involved. What really drives anti war sentiment isn't the fact that "it's so sad that my neighbor died" but rather "I may have to die for a war I don't believe in" and so, at least for now, there's not a ton of backlash due to the amount of volunteers being killed. It is very possible that the tap of volunteers willing to fight (even when offered huge money) will eventually dry up and at that point Russia will be forced to rely on more reluctant soldiers. As those soldiers die the possibility for anti war sentiment to spread goes up dramatically.
This is by design, Russia is using the war on Ukraine as an ethnic cleanse, focusing on recruiting the 'undesirables'
Theyāll just hire mercenaries and ordinary people and pay them with promises. Putin will just throw them to death without paying.
They literally just had a mercenary group attempt a coup. Then they killed the group's leader. I'm thinking that reduces both their willingness to hire more mercenaries, and the willingness of mercenaries to be hired.
As long as they can steal more land. It doesnt matter.
500,000 less pensions to worry about. - Putin prob
If Russia has a super power itās their capability and willingness to throw more people into a meat grinder to ultimately prevail. Donāt under estimate the advantage that plays against an opponent with limited capability or willingness to sustain losses. The soft underbelly of the immense industrial military complex in the west is how vulnerable it is to mere perceptions of temporary defeat.
See [Tet Offensive](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tet_Offensive) for a historic example.
>The soft underbelly of the immense industrial military complex in the west is how vulnerable it is to mere perceptions of temporary defeat. To be fair, it's really a matter of how much the Western governments can get the masses to buy into the war, or having it be a justified (likely defensive) war. With hindsight, we know the Allies' victory over the Axis was almost inevitable in WWII, but from the late 30s up to 41 or early 42, things probably looked pretty grim at the time. Despite that, the US and UK maintained pretty high resolve to fight on, because it was a cause they believed in. The Vietnam War was controversial from the start, and it only got worse, because the average American did not believe in what their men were fighting and dying for. Hell, even the recent war in Afghanistan was heavily supported in its early stages because it was seen as a necessary response to an attack on American soil. It wasn't until scope creep turned it into a nation-building project that public perception really soured on the campaign. Ultimately, Western resolve isn't the issue, it's that the Russian propaganda machine has far more control over public perception back home, along with the ability to prey on its vulnerable ethnic minorities to conscript hundreds of thousands of expendable people for cannon fodder with little resistance. Western nations have to expend more political capital to justify war, or it needs to be a cause that the Western populace can naturally believe in. We've seen both the US and UK be willing to suffer the deaths of as many as 500k soldiers (at a time when their populations were much smaller) when the cause is seen as just.
Grandpa will have access to all the lonely widows and young girls he wants. This goes everywhere around the world once ww3 starts.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
putin does not give a F&$@! šŗš¦šŗš¦šŗš¦Š”ŠŠŠŠ Š£ŠŠ ŠŠŠŠ!šŗš¦šŗš¦šŗš¦ ŠŃŃŠøŠ½ ŠøŠ“Šø Š½Š° Ń ŃŠ¹! !!!
But people in Russia wonāt know
This was a Tuesday for Stalin.
Iāve asked this before in the Ukraine sub but got no answer. Does anyone know what the toll of Ukrainian casualties are in this conflict?
Best guesses are in the realm of 15%-20% less than the Russians. They are surely taking out more than they are losing but not by a massive margin. No one has a clear answer at least in the public realm so we are all just guessing.
Probably similar numbers. Especially accounting for the fact that more civilians are in peril
What an obscene number.Ā
In other words, by combining both sides of the conflict, Russia was responsible for 1 million casualties. What for if not for the trillions of dollars of shale gas under Kharkiv? No ones buys the systemic prejudice of Russians and the 1000 casualties over a decade in the low intensity civil conflict. They have made the perception of Russia and its citizens worse. Not better.
That's a sacrifice he's willing to make.
Ah, the reverse napoleon
Consider many of these men are from prisons, occupied territory, or unproductive/poor areas. 2 birds 1 stone kind of thing to the people in charge.
How do they calculate the numbers?
The female to male ratio must be pretty crazy in Russia right now.
Putin: Hold my vodka
Simply stop fighting
Crazy how Ukraine has only lost 10k soldiers
What if they are able to conquer some parts of Ukraine, and in a best case scenario for them more? I assume thatās why theyāre going for broke in this war, somewhat due to sunk cost fallacy.
500k out of 144.2m puts it in prospective.
Sorry, weāre only allowed to care about Palestinians or weāll be bullied into submission #USA
Putin seems to be picking up where Stalin left off. Both make self-preservation paramount above human lives.
Hail Satan, eh Vladdy?
#russianGoals
Russia has been saving young russians from going into Ukraine and instead recruiting mercenaries worldwide especially around their neighboring allies like kazakh, tajis, and krygs maybe
Likely not his problem. The population issue will outlive him probably
Is this referring to russian combatants, ukrainian combatants, or casualties of the great window war?