War in Ukraine

National Interest estimates that more Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded than have ever been injected into theatre while Russian plods remorselessly forward collapsing Ukrainian lines all across the front and with Western sources hinting that Ukraine cannot hold out much longer.

 

How them sanctions working ?

 

Cope post of the year so far …

 

Complex answer to a seemingly simple question. The answer is, yes, our intelligence services have a very good idea of how many Russians have been killed or wounded badly enough to necessitate evacuation, possibly a better idea than an any single Russian agency, since they are restricted from talking to each other. You can start with the number the Russians release, which is woefully under the accurate metric. Some of this is creative math: not "counting" the missing (even when they are certainly dead), the former prisoners, anyone who died of their wounds outside of Ukraine, foreign volunteers, etc. Some of it is straight-up fabrication: classifying someone who had been killed in action as having died in training, for instance. Even with that, we know the Russians are not truthfully aggregating the casualties; for instance, even with 100 fatalities that "count" according to their metrics, they publicly release, say, 30 dead. It is very telling that when the Russians released all of the intelligence leaked by Jack Teixeira (the Air National Guard traitor who published classified material on Discord), the only data they changed that I know of was the estimated Russian casualty figures, and they lowered them to fit what they were telling their people. So how do we know what their actual butcher's bill is? Because deaths are actually very hard to hide, even in a closed society like Russia. You start with what the Ukrainians are saying. Sure, when they actually manage to catch video footage of 10 Russians dropping dead, that's pretty indisputable, but much more of the time they shelled an enemy-held position and "estimate" 10 KIA. Well, then -- and this is the part where I'll be more vague on purpose -- we have our electronic intelligence that intercepts Russian radio transmissions and such. We know when bodies get moved back to Russia and how. We know when a family suddenly stops getting Dimitri's paycheck. We know when Pavel the Undertaker starts getting more business. We know when Svetlana calls multiple people in her village to tell them that Vasily is not coming home. We know from human intelligence that this village thinks it has received a disproportionately high number of casualties and the other villages are doing better ... only we also know that those villages also think they were the ones hit hardest. So why bother with the deception? I'm sure part of it is not wanting to give Ukraine the satisfaction or the intel on what is working and what isn't, but mainly the Russian concern is about keeping the temperature down domestically and not letting the average Russian know how bad things are. This is also why Russia has deliberately kept its recruiting efforts out of the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas. Those are the two primary population centers, the areas where revolts have historically initiated, and where most of the elites live. They have to keep the funerals from happening in those two cities even at the expense of military efficiency in the field. All of that said, the actual number of Russian KIA is currently well north of 100,000, and that is deliberately conservative.

 

Russia is said to have lost 26.5 million in the last conflict it considered as existential.

 

How them sanctions working ?

EU elites are in despair over Europe’s economic death spiral

 

Ukraine war: Lammy says Iran providing missiles to Russia changes debate (bbc.com)

Key points:
- Iran is providing Russia with ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine (begs a question no one seems to be asking about why a military-industrial powerhouse like Russia needs more and more foreign material aid; we all get why Ukraine needs it)
- This latest seems to have knocked some fence sitters in the U.S. firmly into the camp of providing Ukraine with more long-range munitions accompanied with fewer restrictions on their use
- Expect restrictions to be lifted within the next couple of days and more long-range munitions, such as the JASSM, being available to Ukraine by November.
- Going to be a rough winter for both parties this year, not just Ukraine

 

The Kursk incursion is over …

Whatever the aim of the incursion was has not been achieved. It created a short sugar-high in Ukrainian morale but that has already dissipated.

The price was high. Half of the troops and material invested in the incursion are now gone.

Russia seems to believe that there is not much more for it to gain from this trap and started to shut it down. Yesterday a fast attack by Russian Marines and paratroopers cleared ten towns and hamlets of Ukrainian forces. Today at least three additional towns were liberated.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

 

War Pig

 

Turkey's Erdogan Says Russia Must Return Crimea to Ukraine - Newsweek

Even NATO's biggest bad boy is saying that Russia can't just have it. But, hey, there's still NATO powerhouses Hungary and Slovakia in Russia's corner.

 

Erdogan does not straddle the fence. He climbs down into your backyard. Then he climbs back into his backyard. Then …

 

Putin warns that allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia will draw West into war (msn.com)

To channel my inner Sabrina Carpenter, "please, please, please" don't let this be another one of your empty threats. My colleagues and I would be delighted to accept your invitation.

Make this easy.

 

Rooting for that WWIII I see.

Nice.

 

It’s Zelensky’s wet dream.

 

Not in the sense that you mean. I am genuinely just as interested as you in seeing Ukraine win with our support as short as possible of dropping actual bombs on Russians. But if you want someone who is going to respond to continuous overt Russian threats of attacking us or our allies with "Gosh, we don't want that. What can we do to mollify your anger?" then you already have Jake Sullivan for that, and there is none better. The civilian government makes the decision as to when to employ the armed forces, and that is as it should be. Our people and the Russians trolls who visit sites like this one need to understand that our armed forces, rightly, do not get to decide when to make war, but while Putin et al have been running their mouths about making war on us, our armed forces have been quietly studying the problem for two years, have clearly smelled the blood Russia has been spilling into the water, and are prepared on a moment's notice to pull them apart like warm bread. Russia needs to understand that fact a little better when they resort to threats. Keeping the temperature of this war as low as possible is lot more in their interest than it is in ours.

 

Russia doesn't want any part of the U.S. military. They've got more than they can handle with Ukraine's military fighting with 40-year-old weapons and no navy vessels longer than 40'. They are either bluffing or drunk if they seriously talk about fighting the U.S.

 

All the US has to do is send its trannies to the frontlines and Russian troops will die laughing.

 

Oh for sure. I'm fairly certain we would dismantle them in a conventional war in fairly short order.

My problem is folks believe they are rational. As I've said before, Trump has shown me that is not a safe assumption. Push the crazed men too far and ... well off to Earth 2.0 we go. What we don't have a spare? Damn....

 

LOL the Murican bravado.

There’s a reason why the U.S. hasn’t sent troops (officially) to Ukraine.

 

Glad you are on our side.