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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.
That is ... not exactly BS, but somewhat distorted. The only reason the war in Ukraine is as it is - is because no air superiority exists on the Ukraine side. In a large scale conflict Nato vs Russia we will have orders of magnitude more jets than Ukraine has and probably enough to make sure that Russian airforce won't be able to lob KABs at their leisure, their Geran launch sites will be exposed, their fiber drones C&C will be easier to neutralize and we will be totally free to conduct as deep strikes in russia's territory as we feel is needed with whatever weapons we have in our arsenal.
So don't rush drawing a conclusions about what the nature of the war is. Ukraine has been fighting with limited resources, some of them with strings attached and Russian airforce is far cry from the USSR numbers - and russians don't seem to be able to mass produce them.
And completely automatic jets are at least some years away.
Ukraine is instructive - Americans knew Russians would either cuck or fight.[1] Either cost Americans little and hurt Russians, so it was all fine by them. Who gives a shit about half a million dead Slavs, right?
Now, what do you think would happen if Americans attacked Russia directly, eh?
No, in a conflict with Russia what would happen would be that the moment Russian air defense situation got critical, they'd launch tactical nuclear weapons at American air bases in Europe and the air war would abruptly cool down to manageable proportions. Or the world would end, I guess.
I guess it's all up to how lucky the Americans feel, I guess.
[1]>“The choice that we faced in Ukraine — and I’m using the past tense there intentionally — was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield,” said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. “And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.”
Hey, at least we'd get a chance to test my personal conspiracy theory that the US has at least 10x as many counter-ballistic missiles as it has advertised.
I have literally no evidence of this, but it seems like it'd have been a pretty obvious good idea to have done quietly years ago (and not a good idea to advertise the end of MAD), and would maybe explain why we were so open to using them in Israel earlier this year.
This was the only thing that made sense to me given:
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