The Struggle For Ukraine

[Trenchcoat]

What a load of nonsense.


The last "official " admission of losses by Russia was on 12th October,when Defense Minister Sergie Shoigu claimed that 5,397 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine.


It's ok honest Sergie....Trench believes you.


And you now claim that the Russian Government is more honest about it's losses than the Ukrainian one...well in that case as the norm is for invaders to lose more troops than defenders at a ratio of 3:1 that would put Ukrainian military deaths at around 1,800 at that time,and yes that would include the foreign fighters.


Happy now ?


Of course with such a relatively low loss amount for their forces one wonders why honest Russia felt the need to mobilize another 300,000 men.



The same Russian Government who proclaimed they had absolutely no intention of invading Ukraine back in February and that it was all western propaganda,and then a couple of days later invaded Ukraine.


You're not supplementing your income by now working for the Russian propaganda troll factory are you ?


Give your head a wobble FFS.

I agree with this US General's estimate of troop losses on both sides:

http://www.reuters.com/world/europe/more-than-100000-russian-military-casualties-ukraine-top-us-general-2022-11-10/

I said as much in an earlier post a good number of weeks/months before this US General came out and said the same, that I estimated Ukrainian troop losses would amount to around 100,000 men roughly around Christmas. How did I know? Simple, I just took earlier figures of Ukrainian troop losses, those that were stated from Ukrainian troops on the ground, their counting of their losses over certain days/weeks and times them to get rough average monthly losses and times them by the number of months going forward, to December for example.

To my mind taking troop loss numbers to date from troops on the ground is a likely far better and potentially more accurate way to get an idea of troop loss numbers than from the Ukrainian government. The Russian government I know had come out with varying figures depending on who speaks on troop loss figures. The sources that again probably hold more weight are those quoting somewhere in the direction of 100,000 plus troop losses. Anything far below that on either side and I am skeptical.

Even Boe's article that she shared kind of gave an anecdotal account that both sides were losing men all the time. That it wasn't necessarily substantially more in the Russian side while the Ukrainian side had troops that were seemingly immortal/invincible. We have to remember that Zelensky is as much waging a propaganda battle as a real battle. He can't be seen to be doing anything other than beating the odds in order to secure western help. Sure Ukrainian forces are doing well but that is with western aid. We saw how they were starting to fall back in the Donbass/Lugansk before the western Himars arrived and reversed their fortunes and silenced the Russians artillery advantage.

Troop losses are always a question of whether they are lost lives, casualties that can no longer fight, casualties that may return to fight, POW's, deserters, those able to leave, etc. I'm not saying for certain it's around 100,000 killed both sides but I reckon it's somewhere near that in effect. I don't also mean to sound callous in all of this, moreso to the Ukrainians as it is if course them who fight on the ground losing their lives to stop the invaders so they chose to give up/risk their life while others talk of the wider macro issues, ourselves of course included.

[Trenchcoat]

This is an interesting article recently out:

http://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/russia-ukraine-defense-minister-mobilization-putin-war/32202105.html

Think it was always thought Russia would mobilize more troops in January. So will be interesting to see if this comes about, wouldn't surprise me.

I don't think Russia has chewed through the previous 300,000 conscripts already. Some would have plugged the gaps, perished become casualties or flown. Many will have filled previous troop losses, the possibly 100,000 or so. Others we have heard are training in Belarus. I think in general it could be part of a build up of troops over time to potentially vastly outnumber the Ukrainians. Some potentially possibly for further invasions from Belarus and possibly south of Moldova. I tend to see Russia as not particularly concerned with individual Russian troops losing their lives in the war through going in with little or no training but more about eventually throwing large numbers at it in order to overpower their opponent - Ukraine.

[JohnDearGreen]

Ukraine losses are rarely published.
"Ukraine’s president would make the total public “when the right moment comes”.   Ukraine has been tight-lipped about the number of its military dead and wounded, citing its worry that revealing the total would give Russia a military advantage. The first official total was announced in August when Ukraine’s army chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said 9,000 had died. The total number of injured has not been stated."

One report back in June:
http://newsreadonline.com/ukraine-lost-about-10000-soldiers-in-war-with-russia-arestovich/

Civilian deaths are estimated here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Civilian_deaths

[Trenchcoat]

Ukraine losses are rarely published.
"Ukraine’s president would make the total public “when the right moment comes”.   Ukraine has been tight-lipped about the number of its military dead and wounded, citing its worry that revealing the total would give Russia a military advantage. The first official total was announced in August when Ukraine’s army chief, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said 9,000 had died. The total number of injured has not been stated."

One report back in June:
http://newsreadonline.com/ukraine-lost-about-10000-soldiers-in-war-with-russia-arestovich/

Civilian deaths are estimated here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War#Civilian_deaths

Absolute bs to my mind that just 9,000 had died towards that point in the conflict. Gives a cartoon like impression to the conflict like where a cartoon character gets whamed by something and jumps up little the worse for it and carries on. Those figures I just don't trust, just way to little to be plausible, way of the likely real total.

[Chelseaboy]

Absolute bs to my mind that just 9,000 had died towards that point in the conflict. Gives a cartoon like impression to the conflict like where a cartoon character gets whamed by something and jumps up little the worse for it and carries on. Those figures I just don't trust, just way to little to be plausible, way of the likely real total.

Not quite as BS as Russia's official claim that 5,400 Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine by October though.

[Trenchcoat]

Not quite as BS as Russia's official claim that 5,400 Russian troops had been killed in Ukraine by October though.

Seems for a full scale modern warfare that has been running almost a year now surprisingly few troops are dying on either side if these casualty figures are to be believed, incredible indeed!

[Intrepid Traveler]

I have mentioned before that I enjoy Denys on Telegram for his updates: http://t.me/pilotblog

Another source that I find amusing because his take on the Russian conflict is Misha from Quora. Here's one of his latest answers: http://qr.ae/prvB3n

You can view Misha's profile and read his other responses.

[Trenchcoat]

I have mentioned before that I enjoy Denys on Telegram for his updates: http://t.me/pilotblog

Another source that I find amusing because his take on the Russian conflict is Misha from Quora. Here's one of his latest answers: http://qr.ae/prvB3n

You can view Misha's profile and read his other responses.

Micha quotes approx 2 percent of the young Russian generation currently sent to serve in Ukraine (whatever age bracket that encompasses I assume he is talking broadly which is ok). I feel Micha fails to understand how ruthless Putin is though and all those supporting him in Russia. To me he's the old Soviet style of ruthlessness. Odds are he doesn't care and sees 2 percent of current generation out there no big deal, I think he'll happily go on throwing more and more of whatever generation at it. If we are only talking about 2 percent then that gives Putin many more percent to work through and I think he'll more than readily dig into whatever there is to try and win.

[krimster2]

thus Russia became what Russians were always told Capitalism was like during Soviet times.
murdering not only the truth tellers but the truth as well
while 500 families stole 1/4 of the wealth in Russia and transferred it into offshore accounts
which exhaused the system and it  reached the end
after already eating itself completely
with nothing else left to steal
unless you steal it from someone else (who lives nearby)

therefor, this war REALLY is about the existentialist survival of Russia's oligarchy ONLY, with Pootin being the leader of the pack
AND...
importantly, WTF is gonna happen should the Russian oligarchy lose this war, before Russia's presidential election in March, 2024, just 14 months from now

timing...
is everything

blessed are the fuse makers, for they shall bring forth the cleansing fire from heaven

[Intrepid Traveler]

I feel Micha fails to understand how ruthless Putin is though and all those supporting him in Russia.

Misha is no friend of the Russian leadership. He understands exactly how it functions and behaves. Go through some of his other posts. Many of them are quite entertaining because he writes with a deep cynicism, and that was before this war began.

Here is his profile where you can see his prior posts: http://www.quora.com/profile/Misha-Firer

[Chelseaboy]

The before and aftermath of a HIMAARS strike yesterday on a Russian base in Makiivka,Donetsk region.Apparently a survivor in hospital said there are only 100 survivors of the 600 mobilized Russian troops that were present.

[krimster2]

The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine

http://tinyurl.com/bdxsyv66

[krimster2]

the US wants to help Ukraine win by doing as little as possible in the most risk averse way possible...
this is BY FAR THE MOST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY from a "game" perspective, as in "Theory of Games and Economic behavior" by J. Von Neuman
compare it to the terrible mistakes made by (Ras)Putin
Putin will continue his mistakes, because he's now stuck in a rut in a Ukrainian road
and can't extricate himself

if you created some kinda scoring system, then USA gets 10X leveraging in weapons, meaning every dollar's worth destroys' ten dollar's worth of enemy material
while Russia loses assets, over 100,000 casualties, over 4,000 tanks, hundreds of planes, etc, etc
and USA has
ZERO LOSS
so the war costs Russia TEN TIMES more than USA PER DAY
and Russian economy is 10% of USA's
and the backbone of Russia's economy is rapidly collapsing
being taken over by the USA

and ALL THIS
because of moves that Putin has done

so next month there'sll be yet another mass mobilization in Russia, bigger than the last
and this will play into later "human wave" tactics with counter-fire against HIMARS
butt his will fail spectacularly as well...

cuz of what the computers in Odenton, Maryland are sending to Ukraine from Satellite 326
all that sweet terchnology from Iraq's "Eye in the Sky" repurposed for satellites instead of drones and can track individual soldiers, the flow of supplies, and everything else
and squeeze it into a spreadsheet translated to Ukrainian, encryped with SHA-256 and sent to Ukraine on a secure channel
tracks all movement, and builds a complete picture of enemies positions, updated EVERY 90 minutes
it knows more about the Russians than the Russians even know....
same technology that directed Israel's response to the last Palestinian Rocket festival and knocked out 1/4 of underground bunkers, which took the palestinians years of back breaking work, in just a few days

as Borat would say, "very nice..."

I predicted all this years ago, and of course now that it's ACTUALLY happening, I'm retiring and won't get to work on it directly, or be involved, major disappointment
cuz this is the best Ass Kicking Machine anyone has ever made

Satellite 326 calls out the names of the Russians who are to die that day
and what can the Russians do in return?
ABSOLUTELY FOOKING NOTHING!
they think the problem is cellphones...

it's only 14 months to the Russian presidential election
by then, Russia will have lost about 12% of projected GDP as of Feb 1, 2022
inflation will be about 15%
manufacturing will have declined by 40% and be focused on military and not civilian production

USA is building more and more and more LNG terminals in Europe, now even Germany
and are QUICKLY STEALING Russia's European gas business which WAS the backbone of it's whole economy!!!
Russia will be selling to Europe a tiny fraction of the oil and gas, that it sold back in 2021...
and wherever else it sells, it sells at asteep discount
a HUGE decline in income for Russia

question is, will the rising number of casualties lead to awareness and protests
when EVERYBODY knows SOMEBODY KIA in Putin's folley

two years from now
one of these two things are gonna happen
Putin is no longer President of Russian Federation
or
Putin detonates a nuclear weapon over Ukraine

[Trenchcoat]

Apparently Ukraine's GDP is down 30 percent in the last year although that is apparently better than the 40-50 percent GDP decline predicted. Bakhmut is around 60 percent destroyed.

Petrol pump prices here in the UK are nearly back down to what they were before the start of the war, around £1.50 per litre or gallin can't remember which where it was £1.44 - £1.46 roughly. So way down from the £1.88 or so high whatever it was something like that. So it definitely looks like they are plugging the gap and Russia could lose out big time as a result of that. Good for us bad strategic blunder by Putler for Russia.

Putler is hell bent on reconquering Ukraine and Ukraine won't give up, neither side can afford to give in. Both sides will continue to throw all they've got at this I believe until one side collapses in or the nuclear button is pressed by Putler.

Either way it looks like they are both doing each other over in the process. Neither are likely to be winning as a result it's just unfortunate that Ukraine never picked this fight and they'll likely face the same economic misery as Russia. Though that said many Russians never wanted it either only Putler and a certain percentage of nutters in Russia were apparently up for economic catastrophe.

[krimster2]

russians call the NSA HQ in Odenton, Maryland "Chorny Kub"
this is where Edward Snowden worked
and has the gigantic server racks to process the satellite data and extract all the hidden details and translates the data and "filter it" and send it to Ukrainians every 90 minutes!!

imagine if Hitler had a spy satellite and an AI computer that together not only told him that the allies were gonna attack Normandy on Jun 6, 1944, but also told him how many troops and ships would be involved and gave him the updated positions for each one and once they landed, would still track them and could tell him how much fuel, ammo, etc was being transported and consumed, how many casualties, etc

fortunately,
Hitler had nothing like this
and Russia has NOTHING like this!
only the USA and Israel!!!

this is Putin's main real enemy right now!! 
it shredded insurgents in Iraq, devastated Palestinians in the West Bank, and now is fookin up the Russians deployed in Ukraine in a most egregious manner!!!
and each time it gets better, smarter
I don't know what the name of this program is
but I believe I am the first person to publicly connect the dots

BTW, a few months from now, after the offensive, the following bit of news is unlikely to get much notice,
but...
there's gonna be this thing in the news, called "GPT-4"
twenty years from now, this thing will be responsible for the disappearance of about 50% of all current jobs

[Patagonie]

the US wants to help Ukraine win by doing as little as possible in the most risk averse way possible...
this is BY FAR THE MOST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY from a "game" perspective, as in "Theory of Games and Economic behavior" by J. Von Neuman
compare it to the terrible mistakes made by (Ras)Putin
Putin will continue his mistakes, because he's now stuck in a rut in a Ukrainian road
and can't extricate himself

if you created some kinda scoring system, then USA gets 10X leveraging in weapons, meaning every dollar's worth destroys' ten dollar's worth of enemy material
while Russia loses assets, over 100,000 casualties, over 4,000 tanks, hundreds of planes, etc, etc
and USA has
ZERO LOSS
so the war costs Russia TEN TIMES more than USA PER DAY
and Russian economy is 10% of USA's
and the backbone of Russia's economy is rapidly collapsing
being taken over by the USA

and ALL THIS
because of moves that Putin has done

so next month there'sll be yet another mass mobilization in Russia, bigger than the last
and this will play into later "human wave" tactics with counter-fire against HIMARS
butt his will fail spectacularly as well...

cuz of what the computers in Odenton, Maryland are sending to Ukraine from Satellite 326
all that sweet terchnology from Iraq's "Eye in the Sky" repurposed for satellites instead of drones and can track individual soldiers, the flow of supplies, and everything else
and squeeze it into a spreadsheet translated to Ukrainian, encryped with SHA-256 and sent to Ukraine on a secure channel
tracks all movement, and builds a complete picture of enemies positions, updated EVERY 90 minutes
it knows more about the Russians than the Russians even know....
same technology that directed Israel's response to the last Palestinian Rocket festival and knocked out 1/4 of underground bunkers, which took the palestinians years of back breaking work, in just a few days

as Borat would say, "very nice..."

I predicted all this years ago, and of course now that it's ACTUALLY happening, I'm retiring and won't get to work on it directly, or be involved, major disappointment
cuz this is the best Ass Kicking Machine anyone has ever made

Satellite 326 calls out the names of the Russians who are to die that day
and what can the Russians do in return?
ABSOLUTELY FOOKING NOTHING!
they think the problem is cellphones...

it's only 14 months to the Russian presidential election
by then, Russia will have lost about 12% of projected GDP as of Feb 1, 2022
inflation will be about 15%
manufacturing will have declined by 40% and be focused on military and not civilian production

USA is building more and more and more LNG terminals in Europe, now even Germany
and are QUICKLY STEALING Russia's European gas business which WAS the backbone of it's whole economy!!!
Russia will be selling to Europe a tiny fraction of the oil and gas, that it sold back in 2021...
and wherever else it sells, it sells at asteep discount
a HUGE decline in income for Russia

question is, will the rising number of casualties lead to awareness and protests
when EVERYBODY knows SOMEBODY KIA in Putin's folley

two years from now
one of these two things are gonna happen
Putin is no longer President of Russian Federation
or
Putin detonates a nuclear weapon over Ukraine

Very good analysis 

[Trenchcoat]

However good the weapons the West has to throw against Putler he'll keep sending in more men with whatever he's got. Russia is now suckered into this conflict of Putler's choosing and now for both sides there is no way out apart from whoever ends up the victor.

As Krim rightly seems to have pointed out Russia has inadvertently given up the strongest hold they had over Europe with their Oil & Gas. Now that other supplies and methods are being utilized it looks like they have likely buggered themselves for good on that one. That spells long term economic catastrophe for their economy. Added to that the economic decline due to the war and trade sanctions and Russia economic future looks bleak. Russians in the future aren't going to be thanking Putler that's for sure for their economic plight.

It could have been won so easily by Putler but they ended up bungling the Invasion big time with one big strategic mistake after another. Had they cut off the European border invading from Belarus towards Lviv and coming out of Moldova to take up border crossing points they would almost certainly have won by now, after a few weeks most probably. One of the gripes Ukrainian troops still have to this day is a shortage of ammunition & weapons. Had the Russians been clever enough to close the land border Ukrainian troops would have run out of both long ago. I don't wish to see the Russians win but their bungling has landed both them and the Ukrainians in a long bloody war they are now both trapped in with economic & personal misery for both sides unfortunately as a result.

[Trenchcoat]

An interesting article on LNG:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/07/germany-wind-energy-greens/

Appears they are putting them up real quick in Europe/Germany, in about 10 months thereby crushing Europe's dependency on Russia for Gas & Oil. Add to that Gas & Oil output increases and development from elsewhere and Russia's advantage there over Europe has gone.

With the development of Nuclear Fusion and time out from relying upon Russia for Energy, Europe will likely be entirely independent of any energy need from Russia by the time the conflict is over and won't want to know about Russia supplying it with anything now they know the price of that reliance.

[krimster2]

this is a "war of attrition"
all about addition and subtraction
how much equipment can one side continually add to the fight vrs the other side
and how much equipment and people are lost on each side
and whoever has the most points WINS!!!
when I "do the math" I see that what the NATO/Ukraine alliance can throw into the war  vrs what the  Russia/Iran/North Korea alliance can throw back,  favors the western alliance IMMENSELY...
if Putin loses his next two offensives, and the first one is gonna happen within the next 6 weeks, then he has one last decision to make
which WMD to use?
right now, a buncha crazy Russians are "bending Putin's ear"
There's the Novichok group
and there's the Nuke EMP group
which group will Putin promote to the front?

[ML]

I don't know what the name of this program is,
but I believe I am the first person to publicly connect the dots.

Actually, Tom Clancy was writing about it 10-20 years ago.

[Trenchcoat]

this is a "war of attrition"
all about addition and subtraction
how much equipment can one side continually add to the fight vrs the other side
and how much equipment and people are lost on each side
and whoever has the most points WINS!!!
when I "do the math" I see that what the NATO/Ukraine alliance can throw into the war  vrs what the  Russia/Iran/North Korea alliance can throw back,  favors the western alliance IMMENSELY...
if Putin loses his next two offensives, and the first one is gonna happen within the next 6 weeks, then he has one last decision to make
which WMD to use?
right now, a buncha crazy Russians are "bending Putin's ear"
There's the Novichok group
and there's the Nuke EMP group
which group will Putin promote to the front?

As I think you correctly stated earlier Krim this war essentially costs the west nothing as in fact they gain. The West particularly the US has vast quantities of military hardware in its army. A lot of that hardware sits around and gets used in phoney war games, training, etc - generally boys toys. At some point that military hardware will become/is becoming obsolete as new stuff is designed. So it's only going to be junked anyway so giving some of it to Ukraine makes little difference. The US in particular has tons of military equipment it will unlikely ever use in real combat. So the cost to the US of donating some stuff it would only junk in the near future us essentially zero.

Russia on the other hand is being run ragged by it all made all the worse by their blunders in Ukraine. I don't see Russia as giving up. Who wins in Ukraine is really down to how far either side is prepared to go and when. Ukraine has to hope on Russia getting so badly busted up that it starts to break up from it all or Putler is replaced to allow for a Russian pull out should Ukraine keep pushing Russian forces back. I personally think it's time to stand clear as an individual as their likely to be slogging it out for some time to come out there with the situation in both countries getting more dire all the while.

[Patagonie]

this is a "war of attrition"
all about addition and subtraction
how much equipment can one side continually add to the fight vrs the other side
and how much equipment and people are lost on each side
and whoever has the most points WINS!!!
when I "do the math" I see that what the NATO/Ukraine alliance can throw into the war  vrs what the  Russia/Iran/North Korea alliance can throw back,  favors the western alliance IMMENSELY...
if Putin loses his next two offensives, and the first one is gonna happen within the next 6 weeks, then he has one last decision to make
which WMD to use?
right now, a buncha crazy Russians are "bending Putin's ear"
There's the Novichok group
and there's the Nuke EMP group
which group will Putin promote to the front?

I don't see Russia conducting anything surprising except chemical or nuke, as they have already lost the strategical and tactical initiative.

[Trenchcoat]

In theory if Russia get enough Kalashnikovs & Men together they could potentially overwhelm Ukraine's army by force of numbers. If Russia could eventually field about one million men or something towards that they might do it. Ukraine won't likely be able to bring to bear anywhere near that number. That said I wouldn't necessarily call it a certain road to victory but a possible one.

[krimster2]

"Actually, Tom Clancy was writing about it 10-20 years ago."

NOT what I'm talking about
I'm talking specifically about Ukraine, and a specific American spy satellite that went up just weeks before the Russian invasion, and this satellite composes the "eyes" of this system
the other end, the brain, is on the ground in Maryland
and that's connected to the fists in Ukraine and tells them where to hit
it's a primitive Level I Skynet
it treats war as an abstract game of machines vrs men
so far, it hasn't gone too well for the humans who've been figthin the machines in the different prototype wars, Iraq/Afghanistan, Palestine, Ukraine kinda like the Spanish Civil War and Japanese invasion of China were prototype wars for WWII

I expect over time, as the machines get smarter, and more numerous
it's just gonna get worse and worse for the humans on the battlefield...
so that when the REAL GLOBAL WAR breaks out, this technogy will be a human lawn mower
and Russia is falling further and further behind in this area of technology
comapred to the West...
they need something else to counterbalance against this
nukes won't work, cuz west has nukes to
but west ain't got NO Novichok
and yo mama ain't got no novichok
hirroshi starry nokichok
ya loobit

bad boys!
whatcha gonna do when a cruise missile with novichok comes lookin for YOU!

whoever uses chemical cruise missiles first, will promote its use by others
like say Iran...

[krimster2]

and they'll have FUN, FUN, FUN, til the Americans take their cruise missiles AWAY-YYYYYYY!!!

a stock kh-55  maxed out on over-drive
TOR spoofers wacked UA 752
to slow down the spread of kh-55s
those who did this, know the time of the rude beast slouching towards slumbering Bethleham
is not too far on the horizon
they spilled the blood of innocents to slow him down