Yep, understood. The Ukrainian ministry of war claim 1.4m dead Russians, Belorussians, Syrians, North Koreans, African mercenaries, batshit-insane foreign volunteers, &c, &c, plus proportional casualties.
For the first couple of years I used to cross-check their claims with the most objective sources I could find, and found their numbers used to hold-up very well…
I stopped wallowing in the horror and misery after that, but certainly find the British estimate highly plausible. UA has lost between 400,000 and 800,000 depending on source, including civilians.
I recall thinking that the original 200,000 men RU sent in in Feb 2022 seemed like a sledgehammer to crack a nut - how wrong I was…
It’s utterly insane, not least because the more men die there, the more fanatically the wider population supports Russia’s invasion. They truly believe they are fighting another ‘Great Patriotic War’ against actual Nazis - even though the largest membership of openly Nazi organisations in the World, is in Russia…
A Finn, I think, once said that they were used to having huge numbers of Russian soldiers permanently along their border. Or, more exactly, 6 feet under it.
Of the allied victory in WW2: “The Americans provided the money, the British the time and the Russians the bodies”. A million people died in the siege of Leningrad (admittedly that was adding both sides’ losses together). Wiki actually reckons 1.3M-2M dead if you include those lost in the evacuations. The museum of the siege (the one on and under a roundabout near the airport) reminds you what hell frozen over must be like.
I think the last part of what you said there is addressing what I was finding hard to accept about those figures: a populace in the modern era, wiling to accept so many of their own being thrown away on such a cause. It just seems beyond all reason. But I guess I cannot conceive, really of the collective Russian psyche. There are layers upon layers of historic indoctrination to take into account there. Not to mention the iron fist with which those who dissent are kept in line.
Russia’s tactics have always been to throw as many soldiers at the enemy as they can in the hope the enemy run out of bullets before the Ruskies run out of soldiers.
The consequences of this is that the Russians were already in deep demographic shit as a result of 39-45. The impact of losing this many more people now is going to be… interesting… long term. Even allowing for their nakedly racist preference for sending ‘ethnic’ Russians off to do dying, this is a rate of loss that is going to have some profound effects on society.
It depends, we’re mostly leftish leaning liberals, with the occasional small “c” conservative here, but you’re from Ukraine? So your idea of what that might mean is probably different to ours.
Basically, no racism, homophobia or misogyny is tolerated.
Post whatever you feel like, but be prepared to be strongly challenged if someone disagrees with you.
Being conservative in your views is fine.
Being a Conservative…? Hmm.
It is staggering. Trump and Putin are cast from a similar mould in that no amount of international criticism makes the tiniest bit of difference to them. You have to question whether they ever actually hear about it.
In the meantime, the US [leadership] is seemingly determined to start a war somewhere.
Illegal confiscation of shipping vessels from Venezuela.
Noise around annexation of Greenland.
And now - US troops deployed against a religious war in Nigeria.
