Nobody interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict?

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Pinch of salt with those numbers. You only get good figures from any part of the war by believing Ukrainian sources for Ukrainian casualties - a mistake I believe. There are alternative estimates and calculations that suggests the ratio was 4:1 or worse in Russia's favour even before Bakhmut really got started, and now they think it could be as bad as 8:1 maybe even 15:1 post-Bakhmut.

These are difficult to verify of course, but there is some evidence that Ukraine is rather more desperate for men than Russia: videos of young boys in fatigues in trenchs, men being forcibly press ganged in Kiev, a 16 year old hanging himself when he received his draft notice and an admission from the front line that the average life span for a Ukrainian man who enters Bahkmut to be about 4 hours are things I've had the displeasure to see in the last few months.

Now the Russians did go on a recruitment campaign some months ago - but these men have yet to even enter Ukraine, they are still either training or waiting outside Ukraine ready for the order to march.

I think there is more supporting the "alternative" numbers than not.

Hillarious.
STOP!! !
You are killing me.

It's quite plausible I'm afraid. To put Russian casualties at ~15-30k ish at any point in late 2022/early 2023 is quite reasonable and backed from multiple non-Russian angles. And in November last year the EU lady Von Der Leyen let slip (maybe from her private briefings) that Ukraine had suffered over 100k casualties. As I recall Kiev didn't say "wrong", they said "that's classified". Classified when they have a public number of 15k ish. Your sniffer, Pepe, is quite off if you don't see what is likely going on here.

Interesting that the side with such a huge casualty rate beat the crap out of the Russian invaders.
And consider, it is harder to assault defensive positions.
Assaulting troops usually have a much higher casualty rate than troops dug in and defending.
You don't seem to be a very educated "Armchair General".

If there were so few casualties on the Russian side, why was there a need to mobilise an additional 300,000 men?
Something to think about.

Well Mr. Armchair Field Marshall, under what conditions do the defenders lose that advantage? Answer: When the attackers have a massive technological advantage. Guess what? The Russians have much better artillery and this is an artillery war if nothing else. They can fire 10x the number of shells every day and much more accurately - they have a massive drone fleet linked up to their guns, guiding their shells. The Ukrainians do not. Their weapons are old, they received too few modern ones from Western allies, too late in the day to make a difference. Despite rationing shells and firing much less than the Russians daily, they are almost out of ammo. I'd say that was enough to negate the defender's advantage.



What do you mean "beat the crap out of"? We dispute the Russian casualty numbers, so I must assume you mean the retreats. Most retreats do not signify any significant victory, though propagandists will love to fill your head otherwise. That the Russians retreat so readily and apparently with little effect on morale should send chills up your spine - they are in it to win it. This is not "beating the crap out of them" in my book.



It isn't to replace casualties they haven't taken, it's because the goals of the operation have changed. They weren't planning a full invasion of Ukraine to begin with. Any general, of the Russian or Armchair variety could tell you that they didn't bring enough men for that. That has changed.

OK, you win.
I don't need this in my life, sorry.

Mikah, these are the "ppl", for want of a better world, that you are defending:

No I'm not Pepe and that is cheap. War crimes happen in every war and if you truly want less of them it is best to avoid war in the first place or bring them to a resolution as soon as you can.

Should I find the video of a Russian PoW, hands tied, having his genitals removed with a rusty blade and say 'hurrr Pepe, these are the "ppl" that you are defending?'

On the Russian side, war crimes are institutionalised.
It is a deliberate tactic of horror designed to intimidate.
ISIS also worked this way.
This is not the case on the Ukrainian side.

Did you watch the video?

I didn't, but I will now, I was worried it was going to show the video again and seeing it once is enough.

Shall we look at it critically Pepe?

They said the crime was the result of one of two things: first possibility is "atrocious leadership and discipline".

- Given how much time the same people spend talking about how incompetent and useless the Russians are from bottom to top, does this not seem like a likely reason? Is it only when committing war crimes that the Russian military truly excels?

Or, and here comes the bait and switch, they put forward that it could be a "systemic weapon of war to terrorise the Ukrainians"

- Host raises a good question, unintentionally I suspect: How does this help Russia? Recall how concerned Putin is in how he is viewed by non-allied countries. This surely does not help Russia's cause, especially when the enemies of Russia will immediately suggest it is deliberate policy.

- Guest responds "Yeah it's really hard to see isn't it?". Hmm you don't say. He then segues into the ISIS parallel and their recruiting videos - which as you recall was about showing off how Islamic they were and their adherence to medieval doctrine. He doesn't suggest this is what Russia are doing it seems he just brought it up to put ISIS videos in your head. He then says [The Russians] should recognise it isn't working... so Russian incompetence and stupidity is floated again - but this time as part of the other side of the argument, which rests on the Russians not having terrible leadership, a partial contradiction he doesn't catch.

- Also said is that we should not be surprised because of all the masses and masses of war crimes we "know" have already been committed. Have we seen an unusual amount of war crimes given how long the war has gone on? I don't actually know myself. If there were an unusually high amount, that might be a small piece of evidence, but not proof, in favour of the systemic theory, but this is not raised.

My conclusion: the ex-soldier doesn't offer anything in the way of evidence that the war crimes are a systemic program and signed off on from on high. He certainly wants you to think it though and more importantly feel it.

I'm afraid it did not convince me that the war crimes are systemic. Until convinced to my satisfaction, I assume they were the same as most war crimes: committed by sadistic and/or deranged soldiers in isolation without approval from on high.

Recent leaks confirm US lied about the state of the war.

Remember US confirm the leaked secret documents are real and they show a very different picture of what’s going on.

So we have public statements verses official secret assessment.

The only real surprise is why anyone would be surprised after gulf of Tonkin incident, Iraq WMD, the mighty afghan army people still believe the c**p they come out with.

All in the linked video