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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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Vadym Ivchenko, Member of Committee on National Security, Defence and Intelligence of Ukrainian parliament has said, in public and over the internet, that Ukrainian armed forces have likely sustained at least half a million dead.. He is from Tymoshenko's party, with a pro-Western record.

So, at least around 2.5x more than is the Mediazona estimate of Russian casualties, and assuming identical age distributions, the per capita losses are 10x higher.

Seems like Russians are employing a simple if sound strategy to win a war of attrition as manoeuvre is sort of dead because nobody has enough counter-surveillance technology. The only remotely safe way of moving forces up to the front is sending infantrymen in small groups into prepared positions.

According to this report on Ukrainians training in Poland, nobody told NATO, at least the lower ranks, that the nature of war has changed.. Even though it's been 3 years of heavy recon drone use in Ukraine, NATO units still mostly trains and operate as if the drones weren't there, which is surprising to observe in a force that prides itself on being reliant on technology and good training.

The main problem isn’t the drones, it’s the massive imbalance in tube artillery. HIMARS systems are neat but they are vulnerable to counter-battery fire and can’t substitute for Russia having ten times as many standard howitzers. NATO’s main advantage is air power, which is politically untenable to deploy and logistically untenable to give to Ukraine.

There was also an imbalance in FPV drones too, with Ukrainian drone forces commander claiming Russians were using several times more last year.

More recently, they were also saying the Russian state-supported drone program is overwhelming and the very modern, very gamified Ukrainian drone ecosystem one isn't up for scaling sufficiently.

So I'm guessing situation hasn't changed drone wise much.

Ukrainian drone forces commander claiming Russians were using several times more last year.

I can't find anything on this, and I severely doubt the Ukrainians would state this.

very gamified Ukrainian drone ecosystem one isn't up for scaling sufficiently.

The contents of the article don't corroborate the claim made in the caption of the hyperlink. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that Russians had several times more drones in 2024 or that the Russian drone program is "overwhelming" or that anyone on Ukraine's side actually claimed this?

I was mildly surprised too.

That has since changed. Now, enemy drones outnumber Ukrainian ones six to one. But superior tactics and innovation still keep Ukraine competitive. Ukraine tends to be first in developing and adopting new technologies, driven by a policy of diversification. Russia’s advantage in mass production means it can adapt and scale up much faster. The pace of change is frenetic, with feedback loops meaning that some software is updated every few hours. By the time Russian drones reach the front lines, Ukraine has sometimes already developed counter-measures, Colonel Sukharevsky claims. “Quantitatively Russia is ahead, but qualitatively we are keeping them at parity.”

Pretty clear, no?