interesting stuff Itse. Kind of aligns with that one tweet where it was reported a crap ton of FSOB people were selling off property left right and centre before the war broke.
The article that Itse quoted does exist in Russian web in some not-mainstream media. Also, the arrest of Beseda and Bolyukh was never officially confirmed. It is rumoured though.
If you want my own unsubstantiated opinion, the article is largely true.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Pointman For This Useful Post:
7:30am, again a nightmare: A rocket flew by outside of the living room window.
My family ran around the area looking for water. They did not find water, but they found a looted pharmacy. It was trashed. If they would sell, people would buy, but meanwhile they take everything that they see. My family were lucky: trachisan, aspirin, ibuprofen, antivirals. They say a woman in a panic was looking for hormones for her thyroid gland. After surgery, crying...
People on the street have begun to barter. Chocolates for water.
It seems tomorrow we will start to implement the plan with bags. Go to the toilet not on the toilet, but in a bag. The bins are horrible. They have not been collected since February 24.
There is no gas, I am in a panic. This is the first time I feel desperate.
We sat until 9pm for the news. Nothing about Mariupol. The whole country is a nightmare.
The Following User Says Thank You to Cheese For This Useful Post:
The article that Itse quoted does exist in Russian web in some not-mainstream media. Also, the arrest of Beseda and Bolyukh was never officially confirmed. It is rumoured though.
If you want my own unsubstantiated opinion, the article is largely true.
One of the reasons I decided to share that was that there's really nothing THAT shocking or new about it, if someone takes that for truth I don't think it will be harmful to understanding the events.
The Times (UK) has printed that rumour about the arrest, so even if they did put some caveats on that info, I'd say it's extremely likely it's true. Of course since it's obvious the information Putin had on Ukraine was garbage, there's plenty of reason besides corruption to punish someone for it.
It's not news that the top brass in Russia is incredibly corrupt, it's really only a question of whether of how corrupt exactly and whether or not they've put any actual effort into doing their actual job. From what we've seen of the Russian military, it seems they're way more corrupt than really anyone knew.
It's also not really news that Russia is bribing or trying to bribe people in other countries to do their bidding.
I would also say that it was already kind of obvious that US intelligence has gotten a lot of info from somewhere very close to Putin. The level of detail they had and the level of certainty they presented their shocking information with was something they're rarely capable of on their own, and there's quite a lot of info that makes it clear only very few people knew about the attack in advance. So had to be someone high up.
Even without the corruption angle, an attempt to stop the attack is really the most likely reason someone would do something so personally dangerous. Would be far from the first time in history that happened.
So really all that story does is put names to the leak we can already deduce likely happened, give an explanation of their personal motive, some more information on why Putin had a completely false picture of how much support he could expect from within Ukraine, and what type of misinformation he had.
It's interesting and plausible, but not significant enough to change the big picture, true or not.
Putin's habit of surrounding himself with thieves has come back to bite him. Unfortunately it's others that are paying the price.
The war is not going well for Russia. Ukraine is a meatgrinder for Russian soldiers.
Nearly 10,000 dead and about 15% of the invasion force killed or wounded. Looks like the Ukrainian estimates are reasonably close to reality
Slava Ukraini
I dunno, I kind of think it's incredible progress. It took them 10 years in Afghanistan to hit these numbers, clearly the Russian military has learned a lot and now works much faster.
The war is not going well for Russia. Ukraine is a meatgrinder for Russian soldiers.
Nearly 10,000 dead and about 15% of the invasion force killed or wounded. Looks like the Ukrainian estimates are reasonably close to reality
Slava Ukraini
I think the Ukrainian estimates is approx 15k killed but that would be based on on the ground counting and experience. The Russian total may be 10k killed as official totals after which the death has been confirmed, body sent back to Russia or burial etc.
It would seem the lag effect would indicate that the Ukrainian total is probably very accurate which is stunning if true.
I read this comment in an article from the Financial Times which I thought was excellent and describes how the combat losses are absolutely staggering when you do a deep dive. Military people know certain and can analyze in different ways but this comment really highlighted it.
" As for an update on the Russian casualties so far and why it matters in today's modern warfare: I aim to explain why, in my view, Ukraine has a good chance of prevailing. Long post but some important stuff in terms of military stats for those that are interested this kind of thing.
First about modern warfare. War has changed greatly since the cannon fodder days on WW1 and WW2. A paper from the US army (link at the bottom) explains how the proportion of troops in a war time expeditionary force has dropped from over 50% in WW1, to around 40% in WW2, similar in Korea, 35% in Vietnam, 30% in the first gulf war and 28% in the 2nd. Nowadays, with the use of drones, we're probably below 25%.
In terms of combat units, things have changed greatly too. 'Back in the days', armies used to commit entire infantry divisions (10,000 men) with around 80% of these men destined to combat. nowadays, war has become much more strategic: combat units are organised in Battalion tactical Groups (BTGs) of around 800 men, 70% of which are expected to actually take part in the combat. These men are spread out over a few km to capture or defend strategic objectives.
Hence in Russia's 200,000 troops, you'd expect around 50,000 to engage in combat, perhaps 60,000 if we're being generous
Now about Russian casualties: estimates vary greatly and it's very tough to pinpoint accurately what the true number might be. Ukrainians claim to have killed 13,000 Russians. US intelligence points towards 7,000 dead Russians, while I've also seen an estimate from a European intelligence officer indicated 7000-9000 dead Russian soldiers. Let's be relatively conservative and consider 7,000 Russia deaths in the opening two weeks. Number of wounded tends to be 2-3x the number of dead in this sort of military campaign, so this would put the number of casualties (dead, wounded or captured) at around 20,000-30,000 in 3 weeks.
To put this in perspective, it's the most casualties Russia has suffered in 3 weeks since the final stages of the battle of Berlin. It's also about a third (slightly more) than all the casualties suffered over the matter of years in Afghanistan, and more than in either Chechen wars.
It also means Russia has suffered substantial losses in its combat troops. most these casualties will be in the 50-60,000 men dedicated too seeing action, meaning they probably have around 30% of combat troops out of action.
For this price, Russia has not captured a single one of its main objectives, despite Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv all being within 100-150km of Russian borders. They have only captured 2 medium sized cities out of around 15 (Melitopol and Berdyansk), and one large city out of 10-12 (Kherson in the South).
Frustrated by this lack of progress, they have resorted to laying siege to cities. But the reality is that this doesn't win wars (not without entering the cities an engaging in urban warfare anyway). The Nazis did it in Leningrad and it lasted almost 900 days, and the Germans also attempted to level London for years. It results in gross civilian casualties and a lot of hatred for the invaders that fuels the domestic war effort.
The next 3-4 weeks will be crucial, but one thing is certain, the Russian will not be able to sustain such casualties for long."
"The next 3-4 weeks will be crucial, but one thing is certain, the Russian will not be able to sustain such casualties for long."
If we know one thing about the Russian/Soviet military is that they have no compunction in offering bodies to the war meat grinder. They will keep throwing bodies at the problem as long as they can with little regard for the losses. How this is viewed by the mothers of dead Russian soldiers back home is a different matter. It could almost be excused when Russia was on the defensive, like in Stalingrad, but that is clearly not the case here.
__________________
The of and to a in is I that it for you was with on as have but be they
Last edited by Red Slinger; 03-21-2022 at 01:46 PM.
The war is not going well for Russia. Ukraine is a meatgrinder for Russian soldiers.
Nearly 10,000 dead and about 15% of the invasion force killed or wounded. Looks like the Ukrainian estimates are reasonably close to reality
Slava Ukraini
For the amount of time that has passed and relative to the whole size of the force, those are massive amounts of casualties. The kind of casualties you can't cover up to other soldiers. Every solider is going to know many of the killed or wounded soldiers, and they'll start talking.
To put this in perspective, Canada through the entire course of WWII saw less than ten percent of their 1.1 million troops killed or wounded. It's about three times the death rate of the allies (4.4k total deaths) in the invasion of Normandy (that's if you count only the 150k soldiers and not the 200k naval members)
The Following User Says Thank You to blankall For This Useful Post:
For the amount of time that has passed and relative to the whole size of the force, those are massive amounts of casualties. The kind of casualties you can't cover up to other soldiers. Every solider is going to know many of the killed or wounded soldiers, and they'll start talking.
Never underestimate a soldier's ability to bitch and complain regardless of the flag on their shoulder.
__________________
Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Maybe the Ukrainians weren't bsing as much as people thought. We didn't have verification of the airplane/helicopter losses via photos, but the numbers are pretty close.
Maybe the Ukrainians weren't bsing as much as people thought. We didn't have verification of the airplane/helicopter losses via photos, but the numbers are pretty close.
I guess when the real numbers are good enough there's no need to inflate them.
