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Ukraine and the Russian invasion, 2022-25

TopCat said:
Would you like to buy some magic beans?
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Well that's me conclusively told with a solid argument. Guess I'd better fuck off now with my tail between my legs.

No one ever uses that correctly, either. The magic beans did work and were the greatest thing that ever happened to Jack, leading to him retiring a rich man. Sucked for the giant, of course. That would probably be Russia in this hopelessly twisted metaphor. :)

ETA, for anyone who's paying attention, Ukraine did clarify that 31k is confirmed dead, identity known, buried in Ukrainian cemetery. If you add in MIA, it's around 70k. But if you're reading the news, you know that. I assume some posters think that's a lie, too.
 
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Chz said:
Do I belive him (Zelensky)? Well, we do have that single peer-reviewed article. Let me quote from that:
"We find no evidence of systematic bias in Ukrainian reports of Ukrainian military deaths."
And:
"We compute the ratio of casualties to deaths for Russia and Ukraine, finding values of 2.9:1 and 4.9:1, respectively."
That would give a total of 150k Ukrainan casualties, which is a bit lower than but farily close to estimates from other sources.

Russia's and Ukraine's incentives to lie are different. Russia primarily targets their domestic audience, who already knows that the regime is lying through their teeth, so they have to lie even more to make people think that the war is going well for Russia.

Ukraine's primary concern is western support - domestic support will likely be relatively high anyway. Blatant lies erodes trust in the Ukrainian government, which will impact aid. If anything, Ukraine is more incentivized to overstate their own losses, and, by extension, their aid needs. Both Ukrainians and "westerners" already know that the war isn't going great for Ukraine. If the real KIA figures were 50k or 75k, stating that wouldn't erode either foreign or domestic support.

Ukraine simply has no reason to lie, every reason not to, and independent, peer reviewed science claim that they don't lie. Do I believe him? Not blindly, but I see no reason not to in this case.
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if the ukrainians are killing russians at a rate of nearly five to one, and ukraine started with nearly a million troops, and russia started with two hundred thousand or so (both have reinforced since then), how come ukrainian front lines are collapsing at the moment?
 
discokermit said:
if the ukrainians are killing russians at a rate of nearly five to one, and ukraine started with nearly a million troops, and russia started with two hundred thousand or so (both have reinforced since then), how come ukrainian front lines are collapsing at the moment?
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www.theguardian.com

Ukraine will be on back foot in war for months, says UK armed forces chief

Kyiv unlikely to be able to mount fresh counteroffensive until late summer at very earliest, says Adm Sir Tony Radakin
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
1709144730269.png
 
discokermit said:
if the ukrainians are killing russians at a rate of nearly five to one, and ukraine started with nearly a million troops, and russia started with two hundred thousand or so (both have reinforced since then), how come ukrainian front lines are collapsing at the moment?
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While "collapsing" isn't an interpretation I've seen in even the more pessimistic reports, there is a good answer to the raw numbers question. The numbers for the Ukrainian Army cover everyone, which includes the bulk of their forces that aren't directly involved in the fighting. All the best trained and equipped soldiers are on the front line, but the majority of their forces are actually sitting guarding the borders with Belarus and Transnistria, and the bits of the Russian border where there isn't any fighting. Ukraine doesn't have the supplies to commit more than they have on the front line.

One thing that tends to be ignored in the conscription talk is that Ukraine is also looking to demobilise nearly half a million. People have been stuck fighting for two years straight the government is trying to address what many see as the unfairness of that.
 
discokermit said:
ok, how can they kill russians at five to one with no ammo?
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Because the Russian strategy was quite literally to throw the undesirables from Wagner and the occupied terriories in as human bullet shields to arrive at this exact result? It's inhuman, but it's not incompetent. And it's worked.
 
discokermit said:
if the ukrainians are killing russians at a rate of nearly five to one, and ukraine started with nearly a million troops, and russia started with two hundred thousand or so (both have reinforced since then), how come ukrainian front lines are collapsing at the moment?
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Putin has reinforced their military with a very unpopular "partial mobilization" and a couple of "conscription cycles" per year. The military are also concentrating their "force generation" efforts onto the migrant population and people of ethnicities other than "Russian", raiding prisons, encouraging the regional administrations to raise "volunteer battalions" and failing to release conscripts / volunteers / contract soldiers who have served the full term of the contract originally signed. Note that the original conscription terms state that the conscript would not serve outside Russia [aka in Ukraine] ... note also that a significant proportion of the crew of the Moskva were - allegedly - conscripts.
 
editor said:
Yes. It'll certainly be over for Ukrainians who can expect more oppression, rapes, revenge and destruction and taking of their land.

And then the Polish and other neighbouring states can look forward to the Russian war criminal regime threatening them and trying to illegally grab more land via illegal invasions.
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Why do you think they would threaten other neighbouring states?
 
Chz said:
While "collapsing" isn't an interpretation I've seen in even the more pessimistic reports, there is a good answer to the raw numbers question. The numbers for the Ukrainian Army cover everyone, which includes the bulk of their forces that aren't directly involved in the fighting. All the best trained and equipped soldiers are on the front line, but the majority of their forces are actually sitting guarding the borders with Belarus and Transnistria, and the bits of the Russian border where there isn't any fighting. Ukraine doesn't have the supplies to commit more than they have on the front line.

One thing that tends to be ignored in the conscription talk is that Ukraine is also looking to demobilise nearly half a million. People have been stuck fighting for two years straight the government is trying to address what many see as the unfairness of that.
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All the people who wanted to fight are in the armed forces or dead or injured. Demobilising half a million troops with no replacements can’t happen.
 
TopCat said:
All the people who wanted to fight are in the armed forces or dead or injured. Demobilising half a million troops with no replacements can’t happen.
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The point was to mobilise more people in order to demobilise people. Not just tell half the army to go home. I don't believe even you could interpret it that way.
 
TopCat said:
Does blaming them for WW2 equal desire to invade them?
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TopCat said:
Is this your own theory?
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TopCat said:
Why do you think they would threaten other neighbouring states?
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TopCat said:
Does blaming them for WW2 equal desire to invade them?
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Yes, he wants the old soviet empire back as an area of influence and a protective layer of weak /failed states between Russia and the decadent West. The fact his neighbours hate Russia and want little to do with it and went to NATO the first chance they got the fact he couldn't get Ukraine onside without war. Shows how terrible Russia is
 
dylanredefined said:
Yes, he wants the old soviet empire back as an area of influence and a protective layer of weak /failed states between Russia and the decadent West. The fact his neighbours hate Russia and want little to do with it and went to NATO the first chance they got the fact he couldn't get Ukraine onside without war. Shows how terrible Russia is
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And you base these assumptions on what exactly?
 
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