Unit2Sucks said:
Thought I would share another reminder to be very skeptical of any attempt by anyone to estimate combat losses from either RUAF or AFU in the criminal invasion. The only clear answer is that "too many" have given their bodies and lives to Putin's folly.
Timely follow up to this. In connection with Zelensky's visit to Washington seeking more aid, the US has declassified intelligence estimates of Russian losses to date. They say that 315,000 Russians have been attrited (injured or dead), which numerically matches up almost entirely to the original invasion force. Of course, there have been many more troops sent since then (convicts, etc.) so it's a bit weird that everyone is reporting this as if it represents losses from some snapshot in time of the forces deployed.
We know that the shills will claim that this is false information and as I've stated many times, there is reason to be skeptical of any attempt to estimate.
What we can say conclusively, is that the notion that Russia has gotten stronger or that it's waging war in a way designed to conserve its forces is laughable. Whether Russia's losses are 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 or some other number - it's costly. They've been forced to reconstitute many of their previously highest performing fighting units with inexperienced, worse warfighters.
This intelligence disclosure should also put to rest the idiotic claims from earlier this year based on obvious Russian forgeries of US loss reports in connection with the Texeira leaks. As I shared back then, shills on BI liked to pretend that the US was a source of truth for their completely baseless contention that Russia had suffered far fewer losses than Ukraine. At the time they were claiming 7:1. Maybe now they are claiming 10:1, 20:1, 100:1 or some other ridiculous made up number. None of it was ever true. What is true is that the material leaked shows that Russia had lost more than Ukraine and Russia manipulated the images to show otherwise, and pro-Putin shills offered that manipulated information in order to claim that the US confirmed their lies.
Let it now be clear to everyone who hasn't figured this out already, the shills have been lying to you this entire time and they will continue to do so as long as people are willing to give them the space and attention.
tl;dr no matter what anyone tells you, this has been a costly war with far too many people going to early graves to satisfy Putin's criminal fantasies.
Avdiivka is a perfect example. Russia is gunning for a pyrrhic victory and pretending like it's a walk in the park. Russian soldiers don't feel that way.
And finally, looks like Poland's elections confirmed that they don't want to abandon NATO or Ukraine. A few weeks back all the Russian shills were celebrating like crazy when the former PM said it was time to abandon Ukraine. They are all notably silent now.
