War in Ukraine

Have you seen a figure on Ukraine's KIAs?

 

Thank you for the post. Informative, however I would take slight issue with "wounded" despite your erudite analysis. Wounded have many deleterious
effects, which of course you know, in terms of the local theater of operations, the logistics of dealing with them at and from the battlefront, and of course the strain on medical and rehabilitation resources back home.

If my understanding is correct, Ukraine is far more impacted by wounded as compared to Russia, simply because it seems Ukraine puts far more time and resources on tending to wounded casualties as compared to the Russian side, which, historically speaking, has a rather narcissistic and measured concern for them, especially for combatants from the far Eastern Russian provinces.
Regardless, if your projection of 250,000 + happens to be close to correct, that is a horrific number, at least by modern warfare standards.

I find the toll on the Russian society, when contemplated from all aspects, is stunning in terms of what exactly Putin and the Kremlin stands to gain.
Even if they "win", Russian military stocks have been depleted, the myth of Russia as being the 2nd strongest military power being completely debunked, the aforementioned human toll, Sweden and Finland having now joined NATO, Western Europe is rearming itself and of course the Eastern provinces of Ukraine having been turned to rubble. The mine clearing and environmental costs alone will be staggering. Rebuilding of infrastructure? A decade. And of course this does not even address GNP and Standard of Living Issues. Incidentally, Ukraine continues to harm the Russian Military, Industrial and Fuel Industries Complex deep into Russia now.


AND FOR WHAT?? An EGO TRIP?? A legacy?

Nothing like sound leadership.

SMH

 

Yes, there is some variation. I'll try to break it down. Ukraine officially acknowledges 43,000 military killed in action. Western sources place it a bit higher, around 70,000. Now why the variation? Some speculation on my part. Many Ukrainians killed or missing in this conflict have been civilians. Of those, many were in militias or otherwise part of a levée en masse when the war first started and normal people rose up to defend their homes. Should those casualties count as military or civilian? Also, Ukraine, though a far more open liberal society than Russia, is still operating under existential wartime conditions and has operational security considerations about how much to tell the enemy about what is working and what isn't. In terms of confirmed civilian deaths, the number is around 13,000, but I don't think that includes numbers from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. For instance, around 20,000 Ukrainian children from the occupied territories are totally unaccounted for. Now most of them are probably detainees in Russian re-education centers, but many are most certainly dead and will never be reported.

 

Oh, make no mistake, my friend. I do not undermine the value of wounding the enemy nor minimize the cost of wounds to friendlies. I am only speaking in terms of cold measurable statistics that KIA is a more useful measure of performance because everyone knows exactly what it means. I simply mean that "casualty" can mean anything from a dead soldier to a missing soldier to a deserter to a guy who got a one-inch scratch from a shell fragment and returned to duty that same day.

 

70,000 seems incredibly low. I believe it's much higher. If Ukraine's government is taking men off the streets, so I've read, they likely have lost many more than that.

 

way too many dead in that mess

 

Well, I don't know. It's not my area of expertise. But if that's the Western estimate, then 70,000 is probably on the conservative side, meaning that the most probable accurate number is well north of 43K but south of 70, probably in 60 range. They would be using a host of estimating measures that are statistically as unbiased as possible and assuming Ukrainian reasons for operational security. Ukraine is indeed using some forcible conscription methods for the more intransigent members of their population who have been evading the draft (the U.S., by the way, used similar methods during World War II, conducting random checks of military-age men at transportation hubs, etc.). I won't deny that is related to casualty replacement, but it is much more aligned to two other factors: needing to grow the number of maneuver brigades and needing to placate the countries donating to Ukraine's defense. It is hard to ask for more and more material assistance when you are not using all of the resources at your disposal, and manpower is a resource. Like any other country, Ukraine has young men who, if they could get away with it, would rather do something more fun, profitable, and safe than serving in the armed forces in a time of war. Men like that need more of a shove from the state. Other men just need to see the more intransigent get shoved as a deterrent to evading themselves. That might not be the ideal in a country facing an existential crisis, but it is reality in any country, in any time in history.

 

I tend to agree with @exiledgator that they’re different over there whether that is by nature, an oppressive government or both. For instance, the US saw 58K KIA over 20 years in Vietnam and had far more protesting than we’ve seen in Russia for a less populated country with 300k deaths.

 

Which is partly why " never get in a land war is Asia" was coined.

 

Well, that’s true, but we’re also allowed to. Protesting the war — hell, even calling it a war — is punishable with prison time. And prison is a one-way trip to the Front. I’m not saying the average Russian views life the way the average American does, but this idea of stoic, resilient Russians who will suffer any hardship on their way to inexorable victory in Ukraine is pure fantasy.

 

Maybe you should read the article in @Taipan's thread:

MSN

Many of the bodies that Russia "returned" to Ukraine were Russian soldiers disguised as Ukrainian soldiers. Yes, Russia cares that little about their own troops. And, yes, Russia would try to pass them off as Ukrainian just to make it appear that they were winning the war. Sure, Ukraine could dress up dead pigs as Russian troops and try to trade them for dead Ukrainian soldiers, but they didn't do that, now did they?

And Russia saves money on the deal. They get someone else to take care of the burial, and they avoid paying the widow since there is no proof that the soldier is dead.

 

The U.S. generally does not kill protesters or exile them to prisons in northern Alaska. The fear factor is very different in the two countries. Russia does not even pretend to have freedom of speech. Russian presidential candidates can be imprisoned and killed if there is a good chance they could win the election. In Russia, people have to be starving to death before the protests start. In the U.S., people have to be irritated enough to stop texting and looking at TikTok and Youtube before the protests start.

 

They do not value human life like we do. We ignore that at our peril.

 

PragerU made a good video on the question of whether the US dropping atomic weapons on Japan in WWII was immoral. The answer was no it was not an immoral act because the lives that would have been lost in the war to defeat Japan by other conventional means would have exceeded the number of lives lost in dropping the bombs. So, the choice to drop atomic bombs was a choice that preserved human life given the alternative would have taken more lives. I don't think Putin is operating under any kind framework where he is considering the loss of life involved with his decisions. If Putin had been doing this kind of calculus in his decision making he would not have invaded Ukraine to begin with. The choice to invade Taiwan would involve a similar cold disregard for the value of human life. One of communism's primary moral features that shows its godlessness is a general disregard for the value of human life.

Was it Wrong to Drop the Atom Bomb on Japan? | PragerU

 

That’s literally been the argument for supporters of the bombings for 3/4 of a century.

 

The overall point was you can’t point to that to defend Putin. It doesn’t work since the rationale was to save lives. Putin is not saving lives by killing Ukrainian civilians.

 

Fair enough, I guess I was just more reacting to Prager being the source for something that’s been a discussion almost since the moment the bombs were dropped, by people with light years more historical knowledge than him. In this case I happen to agree with him as a history major as do many others, but he shouldn’t be the source for much of anything if you are looking for factual information IMO. His take will almost always be the pro America conservative one. Even he makes his biases and POV clear. Not much different than quoting Maddow or Olbermann.
Jmo.

 

I don’t think anyone is alleging this. But at the same time, their culture is certainly more desensitized to suffering through war than your average country. No, they’re not in Soviet 1942 form, but ain’t in French 1939 form either. The death numbers are being way overblown, also. This is not the way.

 

If that’s really still your position, then what is your comment on Russia accidentally admitting that its KIA are pretty close to Western estimates? That is where this latest discussion on Russian KIA started a few days ago.