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To add an actual thesis to Mushroom’s unhinged screed, I would steelman it as:
Ukraine has a decent chance of continuing attritional warfare until Russia gives up.
Even if part or all of Ukraine falls, it performed a valuable service in keeping Russia from advancing further into Eastern Europe.
I don’t think either of those theses are inherently ridiculous (especially not the second one), but they both rely on Russia really being as banged up as Mushroom thinks they are. Which who knows. I know for a fact that previous popular estimates of vast Russian men and vehicle losses were quietly and sheepishly exposed as bullshit by all the actual intelligence agencies that were keeping track (CIA, SIS, Mossad). I am really looking forward to reading some assessments of the war 20 years from now when it’s not a live political issue.
I also suspect that China has a much stronger interest in keeping Russia whole and threatening Eastern Europe than they publicly let on. That threat is what’s keeping a lot of US attention and resources flowing to places other than the countries of the South China Sea.
Its pretty clear from satellite imagery that Russian vehicle parks were drawing down rapidly, but the pace of drawdown slowing is largely to do with tactical evolutions. Russias strategy of infiltrate and airstrike identified strongpoints has no place for armor partially because armor has many more limitations but simply because there isnt anything useful available to call up: vehicle parks are dry, the vehicle operators suck shit, and generals cant coordinate for fuck.
I am curious as to what the CIA Mossad SIS info you cite is, because all evidence shows that Russia has lost the thousands of vehicles cited byOryx and has not meaningfully replenished their TOE, and there is no statement from any of those entities to the contrary. If the claim is that Russia has a strong reserve that it can spring forth when the moment is right, there us no evidence for that still: the 1st Guards Tank Army and 4th Guards Tank Division (fuck Russia for their inconsistent nomenclature) are not on the front and are still functionally degraded, sitting pretty in the LMD for propaganda purposes. Russian C2 is degraded by institutional incapacity and the adhoc nature of any push being scraped from whatever is present. There is no actual reconstituted Russian Bear waiting to roll over once Pokrovsk breaks.
Chinas support of Russia seems the most hilarious part to me. China is buying up Russian oil continually, but it is RMB-effected (nominally presented in USD terms) so the actual levers of international finance to punish either China or Russia are limited. Yet China does not provide explicit military equipment to Russia, instead selling dual use components and forcibly adapted shitty golf carts or ebikes for Russia to get blown up. If China was kinetically supporting Russia like North Korea did, Russia would get its thousand tank fleet immediately: there are about 2000 type 96 idling in mongolia visible from Russia, pristine tanks preserved in sandy but dry terrain, needing less to reup than even tanks atmosphere protected facilities.
Instead Russia gets alibaba Desertcross jeeps and suicide tier dirt bikes. If Russia had better frontline electrification they would get the fields of Light Electric Vehicles with 40 mile range that China produced in the hundreds of thousands back in the 2010s. I don't doubt that China is happy to see western treasure expended on internal conflicts far from its border, but China didn't need to start this fight. Its not like the US seems to care about China given that the US is busy preparing for a Venezuela regime overthrow (Monroe is BACK baby!) while China is gearing up for a new Sino Japan war.
I’m referring to a specific incident about a year into the war, when the Ukrainian MoD claimed that Russia had suffered 140,000 KIA so far, and the White House started trumpeting that figure. The CIA quietly said that they thought the number of Russian KIA was more like 20,000, and you actually had the White House press secretary ridiculing the CIA’s estimate, even though British and Israeli intelligence had similar figures.
From what I remember this was a very common confusion between Ukrainians reporting casualties (still probably overestimated, but not really that egregious) and some newspapers reporting KIAs
Meduza confirmations of Russian KIA based on orbituaries were far more in line with Ukrainian estimates for casualties based on a 4:1 wounded to dead ratio, while Russia was just hilariously reporting "no casualties to glorious Russia, Kiev quakes in fear as we approach". Russia only started reporting casualties when Wagner untouchables were being killed. Ukraine also underreports their own casualties by massive amounts but the zigger smugposting about "well we still have missiles and tanks and people to throw so the west is clearly wrong about how much we are losing" is just neener neener loser shit. If you've got the resources then fucking win you useless shitheads. Either you're facing a tough opponent which explains your abysmal pace of advance or you're gassed out against a weakling. Dean writes that "all we have to do is wait for the enemy to lose the will to fight" is a great example of Bad Theories Of Victory, but "we can win but just choose not to" is a strong contender for the top prize of copesnorting. Its fucking Ukraine, a flat open land that used to be your own fucking territory and with compatible rail gauges. If fucking ziggers can't take on their bumfuck rural cousins then they aren't a great power exercising regional strength they're just the dying office boomer bullying juniors while whining about the good old days.
or, you're content disarming Ukraine by physically killing its fighting men and destroying its fighting equipment as well emptying the armories of Europe on good terms in optimal situations close to your border and can do it as long as they're willing to fill their fortifications with soldiers and equipment
Russia was reporting casualty figures until fall 2022 when they stopped publicly releasing the figures. The Ukrainian MoD and government has claimed various casualty and KIA figures from laughable to completely ridiculous over the last 3 1/2 years.
If we listened to Western media, you should be scratching your head that despite how close Russia has been to collapse and failure and how many bagillion Russian men are dead in wave attacks, Russia continues to take land and destroy the AFU. Attempting to quote ISW or even Oryx is just unserious; those people are uncredible clowns with a 3 1/2 year record of just being wrong.
Copesnorting Ukrainians and cheerleaders are their own problem, but directionally they were never as bad as "rossiya stronk forever" antiwest ziggers whether DSA communist or antiwoke conservative. That doesn't mean the RUSSIAN theory of its path to victory is any more resilient. Russia force generation is "on pace" with casualties, and they recruit approcimately 20-30k a month. Math it out however you want, the Russian milbloggers are themselves bitching about massive losses for meters of dead dirt. If the AFU recruitment crisis is so abysmal and they're a shattered force with no men left, then why is Russia not just steamrolling back to Kharkiv or Kherson, the prizes won back early on. You have to make an affirmative case for your own theory of victory, and the Russian theory of victory has, ever since its inception, been "we can lose bodies forever". Their only major true victory in any war since founding was annihilating the Reich, and THAT had its own 'the enemy is on its last legs and we totally didn't lose the entire 6th to a useless siege' copesnorting.
Again, its fucking Ukraine. Flat empty land, equivalent rail gauges, fully mapped out, and literally the poorest country in Europe BEFORE the invasion. To fuck this up is fucking pathetic. Without nukes modern Russia would have been curbstomped to the dustbin of history like the failed traitors they were to the Kievan Rus and the Golden Horde. Muscovy delenda est.
I must not have been exposed to the "'rossiya stronk forever' antiwest ziggers" as much as you have been. In no world is Russia suffering 30k casualties a month.
not what I wrote; what I wrote was Russia is content at defensible lines close to their border where they can shell, bomb, and drone AFU fortifications, push forward with small forces to provoke a Ukrainian counterattack and then kill the counterattackers
I don't think this dialogue is going anywhere and you appear more interested in raging at ghost "ziggers" on the internet than responding to what I'm actually writing, which is typical about ppl who want to talk about this conflict and why I rarely bother to try.
Noble Russia only wishes to defend and kills invading Nazis by the thousand! Defensible line close to border, which is why the rush to Kiev was Just A Feint.
I can linkspam endless analysis from CSIS, UK MoD, Mediazone etc citing 200k+ dead and 900k+ total casualties, but you have already declared, in true Russian fashion, that the data presented cannot possibly match your perceived reality and thus the data is simply false. By charting out negative space in a positively affirmed stance - the claim is Russia has high casualties, but Russia has not collapsed, so Russia cannot possibly have high casualties - the positive affirmation is dismissed by claiming a negative. The affirmative case of Russia having collapsed is not the one being presented, but deliberate conflation serves to blur the boundaries of the argument and widen the counterclaim without needing to make a falsifiable claim.
Semantic games are irritating enough, but this conjuring of fallacies never actually employed by opposing viewpoints is not smart arguing, its cowardly retreating into "I never said that but you actually said something and you are wrong so I am right by default."
So, what is it you are claiming
or
I never said Russia losing a bagillion men will stop Russia, I have CONTINUALLY said thar Russia is extremely happy to toss minorities into the meatgrinder and that it can do so forever. I have always said that Russian C2 is a clusterfuck of ineptitude that prevents armor mass (which doesnt even exist anyways because Russian maintenance was is and always will be shit), that offensive operations are adhoc using whatever meat and alibaba junk vehicles can be scraped together, and that it is a slow attritional grind that Russia can sustain forever because sunk cost fallacy is the most consistent behavioral pattern of failed regimes everywhere.
I have staked my affirmative positions. I don't rely on casualty counts as first principles to justify a negative claim, I see Russian failure - defined against Russias own stated objectives and not the inferred "we are just defending ourselves" cope - and find ample proof of why they fail. I can do the same for Ukraine as well, since you can repeat ever C2 failure of Russia with how Ukraine absolutely bumblefucked their Zaphorizia offensive and their Kursk retreat, and those DID materially affect Ukraines theory of victory. The west also loves to imagine that Russia will break under economic pressure and valiant resistance because it keeps western hands clean, but whether thats a fiction they internally digest because they're incapable cowards or feckless warmongers is subject to. ones own biases. Its not like Europe has actually expended any of its actual warfighting equipment its doctrine calls for. Whether that doctrine is a good one is a different question, but the assumption that Russia is defeating the west by sacrificing the 1st Guards Tank Division for a bunch of javelins and legacy 152mm carted out of Bulgaria is just so adorable.
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