Ukraine’s Top Military Leadership: We Are Starting to Win, Russia Is Starting to Lose
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It's roughly 1 death for 3-4 injured and out of combat
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In casualties as in military losses Ukraine is doing quite badly: Ukraine has lost some 300 000 as dead and wounded, while the Russia has lost around 800 000 as dead and wounded. The population difference is 1:3½, and the difference in total military losses is 1:2½. That means, Ukraine is losing a slightly larger share of its population as military casualties than the Russia is.
However... Neither side is going to run out of population anytime soon. Ukrainian soldiers go to the front, eventually maybe get wounded and return home one leg poorer. Their children will not have to live with their father, only without an organic right leg of the father. And for the Russian side, the deaths are a much bigger proportion of the population. There the ratio is around 1:4½, and that one favours Ukraine.
If a person is measuring ground gained in this war, he does not understand the war very much at all. Neither side is trying to gain ground. Both sides are trying to incur as much losses to the enemy as possible. The Russia because they need to keep the gore to the maximum in order to convince the west to stop supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine, because if the Russia's losses drop under 1000 per month, they will be able to start training their soldiers, which will make a huge difference in their dangerousness.
The Russia knows very well that it will never take over Ukraine with the current speed of advancing. Remember, in year 2024 the Russia was gaining ground faster than expected. And in year 2024 they managed to gain 0.7 % of Ukraine's total territory. Less, if you take the Kursk province's happenings into account. 0.7 % is strategically meaninglessly little.Artillery shell production is currently about twice as high in the Russia as it's in the west. But when you take into account that to hit a specific target, the very inaccurate Russian artillery needs to shoot about ten times as many rounds as western artillery, the numbers start looking different: For military use, you either should divide the Russia's artillery shell numbers by ten, or alternatively multiply ours by ten. Depth of reserves... Well, here we come back to casualties and motivations.
- As said, the population ratio is 1:3½.
- The total military casualty ratio is 1:2½, favouring the Russia.
- The military death ratio is 1:4½, favouring Ukraine.
Russian soldiers are in it for the money. The Russia will have useful amounts of money to give to the soldiers for another six to fifteen months, about. After that the motive is gone. Typically, it is easier for the defending party to find soldiers for a war than it is for the aggressor. This is the case in this war as well. This means, when interpreting the casualty ratios, you need to add a multiplier for taking into account that the defender can tap into a larger share of the population than the aggressor can.
Remember, Ukrainians are sending to the front less than a fifth of what they could, if we compare with Finland. Finland has a population of 5,6 million and we have about one million soldiers ready to serve within some months of the begin of a hypothetical war. Each one of them has received a top-class military training and each one has a specific place in a specific unit in the army should a war break. Ukraine has about the same size army as that, even though they have over 40 million people.
The unwillingness to join the front is a surprising feature, at least from a Finnish perspective, but also a result of a lack of motivation. If the scales were to tip in the favour of the Russia, Ukrainians would get scared and more would be ready to help their country. When looking at the very large difficulties Ukraine has with conscription, you need to take this into account. The problem is of a type that solves itself. It's extremely unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they never get relieved. And idiotic that people don't want to join the army because soldiers never get relieved from the front ... because there are not enough people ready to go to the front.
And, from my experience living in Ukraine, I would say that this won't change. They will remain understaffed as long as the war will go on, but always precisely at the limit where they can still keep scraping on.Ukraine's army won't be disappearing anytime soon, the west is effortlessly able to pay all of Ukraine's budget indefinitely if it so wishes and the Russia is not able to gain any ground. The Russia's goals are to cause Ukraine to collapse economically or its army to collapse from lack of manpower, and neither of those can happen.
At the same time, the Russian economy, and therefore military, have at max one year time left. After that they will have nothing to use for stopping Ukraine from reclaiming its territories. -
For the Russia it's about 1:2½, and getting worse, for Ukraine it is currently around 1:4 or 1:5.
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Once their mothballed armour runs out it seems pretty guaranteed, and there were reports of a surge in bankruptcies a bit ago.
I'd be surprised if it's a full year. Some kind of treaty might come soon anyway, though.
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What should they have said, then? That they want Ukraine to lose and surrender? That they want the stalemate to continue indefinitely?
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It's what the troll center boss told them to say.
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Then go fight there. They’re hiring.
Fair point.
I have a friend in Kiev and they’re kidnapping people to send them to the frontline. Maybe you can take his place if you like Ukraine that much. It’s funny how jingoists who cheers for war are never the ones actually fighting it.
Oh wait, this is an astroturf post.
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As if would want to live in the US banana republic?
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I hope they win is probably good. I hope they continue might be out of touch. OP sounds fake though, who has a friend in
Kyiv"Kiev" that repeats Russian propaganda narratives to them? -
I know what you mean, but the soldiers they recruit are so poor they are seeing real economic benefit for themselves and their families; more over, working class wages have grown past inflation giving them a real wage increase. Ironically the biggest losers are the oligarchs.
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Yes, that's actually pretty typical of warfare under the original feudalism, too. The rich hoard their wealth, until they're gone and their mansions can be looted, or they need poor cannon fodder to save their ass. Then you get redistribution.
I'm not really sure I'd call a short-term, unsustainable cash injection at the cost of actual infrastructure and development "good for the working class", though. If Russia becomes the next Venezuela or even Somalia they might end up with bigger problems than no Lada.
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Some kind of treaty might come soon anyway, though.
Maybe the collapse is closer than we think and that's where this sudden push to resolve the war is coming from.
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What is SMO?
Isn't that the lie Putin told the world about the Russian war of aggression and invasion of Ukraine?
3 days, right?
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I heard of a bunch of Brazilians fighting in the international legion.
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Okay Z oomer
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In addition to all the other valid arguments I want to also mention the rotation principle of the ukrainians. They deploy for six months to the Frontline and then rotate between the dugouts and a safehouse for two weeks at a time. So their soldiers have time to relax and eat good food even while deployed which keeps morale high.
Russia used to just keep their common troops on the frontline until they were exhausted. If I recall correctly they changed this in the last months, but they most likely lost almost all of their pre war trained troops.
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Serving sopa de macaco to the troops?
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if you go on reddit to certain pro-russian combat footage subs dedicated to the war, you'll see one or two new videos a week of Ukrainian men being kidnapped off of the streets and stuffed into a van
they really are taking people off the streets there. they're low on manpower and the men remaining are all those that don't want to die so they've been ignoring any draft summons. so the Ukrainian gov has been resorting to increasingly brutal measures.
i'm honestly just so glad i wasn't born in post-soviet slavic country , lol. i swear the value of life there is not nearly what it is here. on the Russian side they'll force thousands of men forwards into a meat grinder trying to win with pure brute force. if a soldier tries to go backwards, the Russians themselves will shoot you as a motivation for the others to go forwards. hundreds of thousands of men dead or maimed for what? a couple miles of land a day?
then on the Ukrainian side they'll keep you defending some worthless piece of land forever as all the supply lines slowly close around you. once you're cut off, you know you and the wounded with you are all gonna die. command promised reinforcements when they had no intention of sending reinforcements. to them though, the political benefit of holding onto that land for just a little longer is worth more than the lives of real human beings. you are a soldier and you are expendable. (this also coincidentally makes it harder to get fresh recruitment because ukrainian men aren't stupid and propaganda can only hide so many deaths)
i've seen confirmed cases of both sides killing POWs. men walking out of a trench with their hands up surrendering just to get mowed down anyways. men trying to surrender to drones only to get blown up anyways.
war is hell. it's barbaric and highlights the absolute worst nature of humanity.
having said all that, yeah the commenter does seem like an astroturfer or at least a biased pro-russian poster if organic. but the statement with ukrainians being kidnapped, at least from what I've seen, is true. it has been happening at increasing frequencies
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Says Kyivpost.
Lines on the map seem to very slowly move in Russia's favor and Russia's "leadership" doesn't care about human cost as long as it allows further operation of their state.
It's their job to study strengths and weaknesses, so the quote is kinda stupid. Whether they are aware of anything can be said only retrospectively.
I just don't see where Russia is losing, I live in Russia and every year since 2022 people (sometimes not the dumbest kind, but with age comes naivete, and everyone is naive outside of their immediate profession) around me would say how Russian economy and\or defenses are going to crumble soon because of this war.
And before that since 2020 how they are going to crumble because of inability to adapt.
And before that because of sanctions, yes, what was called sanctions then was seriously talked about.
And before that because stealing elections is unpopular and generally immoral.
And before that because Putin will certainly lose an election, right?
It just doesn't work like that.
In Russia there's an expression "глубинный народ" (something like "depths' people" or "deep people", hard to translate), meaning some consistent deep popular feeling about something, it's usually ascribed barbaric feelings, like only caring how the rest of the world fears your nukes or hating everyone intelligent.
But it's also sometimes ascribed wisdom. For example, about prophets predicting the death of Russia's regime all by itself one day. Some of those prophets being children of the previous generation of that regime, supposedly separated from the current generation, but after becoming irrelevant coming back to their herd, like Sobchak.
Things are achieved when people work to achieve them, and with the amount of work they take, not the honest amount, not the amount those people can possibly do. Life is not honest.
Russia is not losing this war. It might reformat it into some kind of frozen conflict.
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Uma delicia
But they were serving 7.62s to the russians for sure, there was a lot of combat footage coming from the Kreminna Forest where they were holding the line.
