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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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They have around 4x the population of Ukraine, for Russia to run out of manpower before Ukraine they would need to have a more than 4:1 loss ratio. I don't think even the Ukrainians are claiming that and they're been claiming absolutely absurd things the whole time.

The Ukrainian government has not generally reported losses but in December 2022 estimated 13k lost. Meanwhile the UK MoD figure for Russian casualty estimates from December 1st 2022 was 89k. If you were to accept their claims then by those loss ratios they could. Which isn't to say the claims are close to accurate but that it is not more absurd if taking those absurd claims as true to believe (or that they could claim) that they would win by attrition.

89k casualties does not mean anywhere close to 89k KIA though.

89k casualties does not mean anywhere close to 89k KIA though.

Doesn't have to. A casualty is no longer combat effective, that's what makes them a "casualty" rather than just "hurt".

In that case you'd want to compare Ukrainian wounded to Russian wounded as well. It makes no sense to compare killed + wounded to just killed. I don't know what exactly the Ukrainian number is referring to since the source was a video in Ukrainian but I assume that 13k "lost" means killed.