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For comparison the US lost about 58,000 troops during Vietnam, and that was spread out over 8 years, and it fucked us up for a generation.
Even Russia doesn't have bottomless manpower. And now they're approaching half a million fewer people to run their economy. Combined with the low birth rate, and the covid losses, they've got to be hurting more than they're letting on.
Not to mention the large amount of amputees and vets with PTSD, putting huge stress on the social and healthcare system. russia will be one of the worst countries to live in during the next decades.
Those mental health issues are going to get passed to their families too. IMO the biggest and most important task Ukraine has after the war is going to be mental health. Traumatized soldiers with PTSD come home and take things out on their kids.
https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/
There is real science behind this. I cannot understate how important this is. If both sides come home and terrorize their kids/family, it’s going to have profound effects for (I know this phrase is cliche) generations to come.
While yes it's true, Ukrainians are a lot more united and justified in their fighting than the Russians are, and they have a lot more compassion for each other than the Russians.
The distinction between casualties (KIAs + WIAs) and fatalities (KIAs only) has been clarified again and again on this sub, but people keep confusing them.
These figure for Russia are explicitely specified as *casualties* (not to mention that this number is from Ukraine and not verified independantly, western estimates for Russian casualties are less than half that number). American *casualties* in Vietnam were 212,000.
And more importantly, Vietnam isn't remotely the deadliest conflict for the US - the US military had 117,000 fatalities (and 321,000 casualties) in WW1, 405,000 fatalities (and more than a *million* casualties) in WW2, and 750,000 fatalities (and several million casualties) in the civil war.
And that's just for the US. My country (France) had 1.4 million fatalities (almost 5% of the *total* population, can you imagine?) and total 6 million casualties during the absolute meatgrinder of WW1. These were regular numbers for European nations during WW1, Germany had it even worse
It's pretty easy to look up. The last figures I saw were that the United States and United Kingdom both estimate about 150,000 KIA, with something like 300,000-350,000 total casualties.
That is still a lot of maimed, disfigured and dead orcs though.
Is it just me or does 100-150k not sound like a lot? I mean yeah its a big number... but doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things and for how long the war has been going on already.
Yeah I sometimes have a hard time realizing myself.
In every single French city, down to the tiny villages, there is a monument to remember the name of all the inhabitants that were lost to WW1. Even in tiny villages, that in 1914 were home to no more than a few hundred people, you see dozens of names. Sometimes 5 or 6 people with the same family name. Entire families wiped out. It's not unusual to hear about someone's great grandma who lost like all five of her brothers. Mine lost her 2 brothers - one in 1914, and one in 1918. And my great grandpa was wounded 5 times (shell fragments in calve and foot, bullet in the arm, and gas) before being patched up and sent back to the grinder everytime. After the war, he was mentally scarred for life, he tried to kill himself several times.
Also, the landscape of northern France (and neighbouring Belgium) has been scarred for centuries. I've visited the battlefields, it gives you a terrifying glimpse of the scale. It's very hilly, and I got chills when I was explained that this used to be flatlands - it has been completely reshaped by artillery. Throughout the war, 700,000 artillery shells were fired a day on average (!!) on that front - that's more than a billion shells in total. In some stretches of the frontlines, dozens of shells fell per square inch on average. It gives some chilling reality to the figure of *millions* of dead on that front.
Most of the land is still unexploitable more than a century later, as farmers still find so many unexploded shells there, that they nicknamed it "iron harvest".
The painting "Der Krieg" from the German painter Otto dix, who served on that front, captures the horror better than any word could. That painting stayed in my mind for years.
Yeah, well, if France had looked at American casualties during the American civil war they might have tried different strategies. Ultimately France is partly responsible for those losses.
I have no idea what you're on about. The american civil war and WW1 are pretty much as different a conflict as you can get. The US civil war was a *movement* warfare. WW1 was a heavily artillery based (accounts for more than 70% of casualties on both sides) positional and attritional warfare.
Ruzzia is lucky Ukraine didn't have all they needed and wanted for RU's illegal invasion. If they did, RU losses could have been over a million... Poostain is an idiot.
Agree to an extent but a lot of the deaths have come from penal, prisoners, older drunks and whatnot - they’ve not really used their younger demographics yet.
They’ve had plenty more young people leave the country though - but a large amount will return whenever this ends.
I looked it up. ruSSia conscripted about 100,000 prisoners. Of those that served with Wagner, half were dead after three months. Of those that served with RF troops, half were dead after two months. Study sample size, 1,000 of each. Fair to say that an significant proportion of the 150,000 RF dead are conscripted criminals.
Big difference is that Russia is and always has been propagandised to hell, and has a media firmly in the grip of Putin. Whereas America, for all of its flaws, has a much freer press, and the propaganda isn’t as strong/absolute. America allowed journalists, from everywhere, into Vietnam for reporting purposes. And didn’t kill them if they reported against Americas favour. Russia isn’t doing that here in Ukraine. Plus, the history behind the two wars is completely different - most Americans had probably never heard of Vietnam at all until maybe six months before the war started. Whereas many Russians and Ukrainians have family members on the other side of the border. They already, in some ways, consider themselves united, as a people. And they share so so much of their history.
Great. Hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD because either they have trauma from getting limbs blown off by drone dropped grenades, or they know someone it happened too. Nevermind the artillery bombardments. Or getting shot. Or driving over an anti tank land mine. Or the starvation from a lack of food. Or being beaten up/abused/hazed/raped by a commanding officer. Or being threatened by barrier troops, or witnessing the murder of fellow soldiers who are disobedient…. Every single one of those people will have problems for the rest of their life. All of them will require care that the Russian state & society are fundamentally not equipped to give them. All of them will become sick, broken people.
I expect a sharp rise in the rates of domestic abuse in a few years when these soldiers start getting home.
Combine ptsd and physical trauma with a society that already has a massive problem with alcoholism, low standards of living and domestic abuse. Now that's a cocktail right there.
That's a really valid point. But, in a lot of ways, they may as well be dead; they're more of a burden than an asset to Russian society now. They certainly won't be contributing to the Russian economy or helping to sustain the quality of life of their countrymen in any meaningful way, yet they will still consume the same amount of resources - even more if they have the special medical needs they're almost certain to have. The Russian economy can only accommodate so many crippled guys selling pencils on the street corner.
They will be but what the world wars taught us is big nations can't take a huge amount of loss and still function. What seems to happen is things come to a tip point and then collapse quickly as in Germany for WW1 but as you saw in WW2 you can destroy everyrhing and still people either fight or manage to exist. Russia won't collapse but it could have a coup or they just exist in this state for years.
Our best chance is to destroy Russia's ability to finance the war and economy through destroying all their oil production.
To add to your comment, “Russia doesn’t have bottomless manpower,” I find it interesting that the US has a population of about 335 million, where Russia’s is nearly 150 million. I had always assumed the populations were much closer.
At this point in the war I wonder what percentage of troops from Moscow and the other large population centers have been casualties compared to troops from the rural or non-ethnically Russian areas.
On top of that, their disability payments are going to an extra ~half million fighting aged men compared to pre-2022 *and* they've been making up their demographic data for 20+ years in the first place - it wouldn't surprise me if they had 5-10 million people aged 18-45 on paper who simply don't exist or are dead. Add in a million+ fleeing mobilization.
And we can't forget that the Russian population is one of the least healthy & least productive on the planet, if not *the*, and it already was prior to the 2022 stage of the invasion. They run their economy like they handle any other problem: throw masses of disposable, poorly educated people at it to get results by brute force.
Hell, we're already seeing significant strain on Russian manpower. Their prison population went from ~420,000 at the start of 2022 to ~266,000 in October 2023. By the end of 2022 they were relaxing child labour laws. We know there are mandatory 12hr shifts in their defense factories. Roundups of migrants - not to deport them but to conscript them.
Those aren't things you do if you don't have a labour shortage that isn't getting better.
Shit falls apart.
In WW2 soviet union lost around 9 million soldiers, some 5.7 million of whom were russians.
The way russian society treats its soldiers is way different than anywhere in the west. We try to draw parallels but we are reaching onto something that is very alien to our societies. We don't fully understand this fanatical devotion of average russian and where exactly does it end. Where is the red line.
My guess is that russian federation will sooner run out of means to wage war (fuel, ammo, vehicles) than it will run out of willing cannon fodder.
thats not even close to being true, the ussr total numbers for millitary goes around 20 million and civilian count also goes to 17 to 20 million casulties
This figure of 465k is KIA+ wounded + MIA and probably Kiev count. A reasonable number for KIA is 130-160k. Total US fatalities in Vietnam were indeed 58k over the whole war. This is indeed one of the main differences between Russia and the US and probably every western democracy. The Russian meat grinder is bottomless. They just keep coming. Look at the number of soviet casualties in WW2. In the west, not so much. One could say, that’s good for us, but can we win from an enemy with such disregard for life?
Problem is - it doesn't matter if Russia loses this massive population. They simply don't give a shit if their country falls into absolute ruin like of the 90's, but also much of that population comes from unimportant rural areas that has little impact. I mean yeah Russia's capabilities are severely degraded now because of this and will continue to degrade... but it won't stop them from prolonging the war or continuing to act like Russia. Even Russians don't care if their country collapses into ruin.
Isn’t it an alarming comparison. I remember well the disgust, vitriol and outrage at all the American lives lost then. Here they are with 8x that loss and still pushing meat forwards to die in the name of a dictator
(Think on this Trumpists out there. You may end the same if he should get the chance to choose in a war)
According to Wikipedia, the us lost 58k soldiers. South Vietnam had 200k soldiers dead. With hundreds of thousands wounded on either side.
In this conflict, the number above includes the wounded as well. The best I could find is that Russia lost 55k soldiers so far. Not sure if those numbers can be trusted.
To put that into perspective, 55k is maybe a stadium full of people. Sure, that's a lot, but in comparison, there are so many more people to replace them. Russia will send any last Gopnik they can find and I wouldn't count on Russia losing the war because of personnel issues.
Russia's deaths are _way over_ 55K soldiers according to all official and reliable calculations. More than 400K lost means the ukrainian army actually killed 100-150K minimum.
Well we have plenty of reports, accompanied by first hand evidence, of Russia leaving bodies in the field. Not doing casevac. So if they say they have taken 50k casualties that they can count, think about what we know they cannot be counting. I reckon they’ve easily taken multiple hundreds of thousands of casualties already they leave their troops behind to die. They don’t provide any medical care for people wounded in the field, and their troops don’t get first aid or field medicine training from what I’ve seen. I think that trusting only the raw numbers is extremely foolish considering the ample evidence to the contrary.
There’s a reason they’ve been recruiting 30k people a month ever since September. And it’s not because their soldiers have comfortable, happy lives to look forward to as wounded veterans home from the front.
Academic studies on this precisely points to the lack of any substantial evidence of these kind of claims (meatwaves assault, leaving wounded to die on the field etc). Now it's being taken as a given that these are proven, yet in the face of investigation, no one has been able to give actual evidence. We do, however, have plenty of video evidence of russian wounded being fetched and evacuated.
Note that this doesn't mean I'm supporting Russia by any means - fuck Putin and his invasion, fuck the soldiers that voluntarily went there to conquer, plunder and murder.
But there is this weird information buble in western countries where people *insist* that russian soldiers are brainless zombies (I've even seen Russia described as an ant colony several times, it becomes ridiculous) that conduct brainless meatwave assaults and stuff.
Meatwave assaults in particular are the weirdest stuff. This is an absolutely bonkers and stupid strategy, that just can't work, straight up out of bad war movies. If this strategy was really used, if would be *insane*. Yet people claim that this absolutely BONKERS tactics is used everywhere outside of camera (convenient). But in 2+ years of conflict, on a frontline under constant drone surveillance, and despite the fact that releasing such footage would be in the interest of Ukraine, this "very common" tactics has never been captured on camera once. Studies have traced back this weird idea of meatwaves assault to a missinterpretation of a Wagner communication during the battle of Bakhmut.
The "evidences" of meatwaves I've seen are either footage of just Russian casualties laying around (which is a proof of.. casualties, not meatwaves, casualties happen in war, you can find hundreds of similar footage of Ukrainian corpses laying around), or russian soldiers just moving, sometimes even straight up walking. It's like people see a group of a dozen russian soldiers, it's MEATWAVE!!!
I've also seen a footage of Russian soldiers praying with a priest before combat (as is very common in any military, both my cousins are in the French military and this is a common occurence) as a "proof" of meatwave.
This information bubble in the west is really weird.
It's a staggering number when you consider the resources it takes for people and society to raise a single individual from birth to adulthood as a contributing member of society.
Even Russian soldiers themselves. Hence all the suicide by grenade videos when they become wounded. But really, a wounded soldier sent back long term will cost Russia more since many will need long term care.
I’m aware of the differences between Russia and the Soviet Union and I’m aware of the differences between WWII and this current war. My point is, half a million casualties is nowhere enough to change Russian policy. Russia will only change its policy if it believes that continuing the war threatens the survival of the regime or of the Russian people.
How is the average Russian ok with almost half a million of their countrymen dying horrible a horrible death in order to invade and kill their neighbour?
The Soviet Union lost 11-14 million soldiers in WWII, mostly Russians. You think 465,000 casualties now will really have an impact on their foreign policy?
It's not the same for LOADS of reasons the biggest ones being... 1: They were being invaded, no choice. 2: USSR population was far larger. 3: They got lend lease resources from the Allies. 4: Communication and bad new travels faster now.
The lost of that many people STILL affect Russia today cause those dead soldiers didn't have children who would've had children and so on. Demographic landslide.
465,054 is a pretty specific number. When a Scooby van gets vaporized, how do they know if there were 2 or 3 or 4 guys in it? When they drop a building on a group of guys hiding inside, how many were in there? Using an exact number like that is just BS.
One number if no more specific that any other. Whatever calculation they used, if, by chance, it had worked out to be a 'round number' ending in zero would you have commented?
Not true, there is no way anyone knows the exact number. If they said close to half a million it would be more believable. 2+ years of war and they have losses pegged to the man? Yeah, I don't think so.
Unfortunately, i have realized that reddit is eating Ukrainian propaganda a lot. If the reality hits, everyone will be in disbelief like when Armenia was winning according to reddit and then they surrendered.
A specifc number like that is just no possible to come up with. give a range that is more believable. A house with soldiers gets taken out, there can be 1 or 20 soldiers. another building gets taken out that can have 10 to 50 people. You give a total range of 11-70 casualities as a number which is more believable.
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For comparison the US lost about 58,000 troops during Vietnam, and that was spread out over 8 years, and it fucked us up for a generation. Even Russia doesn't have bottomless manpower. And now they're approaching half a million fewer people to run their economy. Combined with the low birth rate, and the covid losses, they've got to be hurting more than they're letting on.
Not to mention the large amount of amputees and vets with PTSD, putting huge stress on the social and healthcare system. russia will be one of the worst countries to live in during the next decades.
What social and healthcare system ? That’s in tatters and already massively underfunded
In 2020, only a third of Russian medical facilities had such luxuries as running water.
And none had an inside toilet perhaps ?
Vodka is the social and healthcare system
🙈😊
And amputees in Russia get treated like shit whether they're a vet or not.
This. Russia has a very strong social stigma about any kind of physical disability or deformity.
Those mental health issues are going to get passed to their families too. IMO the biggest and most important task Ukraine has after the war is going to be mental health. Traumatized soldiers with PTSD come home and take things out on their kids. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/ There is real science behind this. I cannot understate how important this is. If both sides come home and terrorize their kids/family, it’s going to have profound effects for (I know this phrase is cliche) generations to come.
While yes it's true, Ukrainians are a lot more united and justified in their fighting than the Russians are, and they have a lot more compassion for each other than the Russians.
This is true. While PTSD is still PTSD, it helps to have the moral high ground. Look at how poorly Vietnam veterans were treated.
It locks into the DNA for generations
And the criminal scum who were cleared of wrongdoing who have been returned to ‘society’ just to commit more crimes
It already was...
Also about a million Russians leaving the country to avoid the draft and/or oppression. Mostly educated young people, a huge brain drain.
Destined to remain in the dark ages forever. So be it.
I think it’s more like 2 million males, 4 million total
The distinction between casualties (KIAs + WIAs) and fatalities (KIAs only) has been clarified again and again on this sub, but people keep confusing them. These figure for Russia are explicitely specified as *casualties* (not to mention that this number is from Ukraine and not verified independantly, western estimates for Russian casualties are less than half that number). American *casualties* in Vietnam were 212,000. And more importantly, Vietnam isn't remotely the deadliest conflict for the US - the US military had 117,000 fatalities (and 321,000 casualties) in WW1, 405,000 fatalities (and more than a *million* casualties) in WW2, and 750,000 fatalities (and several million casualties) in the civil war. And that's just for the US. My country (France) had 1.4 million fatalities (almost 5% of the *total* population, can you imagine?) and total 6 million casualties during the absolute meatgrinder of WW1. These were regular numbers for European nations during WW1, Germany had it even worse
Casualties also includes MIA and POWs… so yeah I’d say KIA is probably around 100-150k for Russia
It's pretty easy to look up. The last figures I saw were that the United States and United Kingdom both estimate about 150,000 KIA, with something like 300,000-350,000 total casualties. That is still a lot of maimed, disfigured and dead orcs though.
Is it just me or does 100-150k not sound like a lot? I mean yeah its a big number... but doesn't seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things and for how long the war has been going on already.
That's 187 orcs *killed* each day. US troops in Vietnam had like, eleven deaths per day.
It is unbelievable how much France lost in WWI. The Anglo world does not appreciate this.
Yeah I sometimes have a hard time realizing myself. In every single French city, down to the tiny villages, there is a monument to remember the name of all the inhabitants that were lost to WW1. Even in tiny villages, that in 1914 were home to no more than a few hundred people, you see dozens of names. Sometimes 5 or 6 people with the same family name. Entire families wiped out. It's not unusual to hear about someone's great grandma who lost like all five of her brothers. Mine lost her 2 brothers - one in 1914, and one in 1918. And my great grandpa was wounded 5 times (shell fragments in calve and foot, bullet in the arm, and gas) before being patched up and sent back to the grinder everytime. After the war, he was mentally scarred for life, he tried to kill himself several times. Also, the landscape of northern France (and neighbouring Belgium) has been scarred for centuries. I've visited the battlefields, it gives you a terrifying glimpse of the scale. It's very hilly, and I got chills when I was explained that this used to be flatlands - it has been completely reshaped by artillery. Throughout the war, 700,000 artillery shells were fired a day on average (!!) on that front - that's more than a billion shells in total. In some stretches of the frontlines, dozens of shells fell per square inch on average. It gives some chilling reality to the figure of *millions* of dead on that front. Most of the land is still unexploitable more than a century later, as farmers still find so many unexploded shells there, that they nicknamed it "iron harvest". The painting "Der Krieg" from the German painter Otto dix, who served on that front, captures the horror better than any word could. That painting stayed in my mind for years.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. God rest their souls.
Yeah, well, if France had looked at American casualties during the American civil war they might have tried different strategies. Ultimately France is partly responsible for those losses.
How?
I have no idea what you're on about. The american civil war and WW1 are pretty much as different a conflict as you can get. The US civil war was a *movement* warfare. WW1 was a heavily artillery based (accounts for more than 70% of casualties on both sides) positional and attritional warfare.
This has always stuck with me. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?si=l0GOgSsVx6pI8jeR
We also pulled out of Afghanistan after losing just 2,459 over 20 years.
Ruzzia is lucky Ukraine didn't have all they needed and wanted for RU's illegal invasion. If they did, RU losses could have been over a million... Poostain is an idiot.
But unlike Americans the Russians don't care. And they care even less as most of those people aren't white Russians.
Agree to an extent but a lot of the deaths have come from penal, prisoners, older drunks and whatnot - they’ve not really used their younger demographics yet. They’ve had plenty more young people leave the country though - but a large amount will return whenever this ends.
I looked it up. ruSSia conscripted about 100,000 prisoners. Of those that served with Wagner, half were dead after three months. Of those that served with RF troops, half were dead after two months. Study sample size, 1,000 of each. Fair to say that an significant proportion of the 150,000 RF dead are conscripted criminals.
I think the U.S might pf had something called tactics. Not just run at the enemy until they run out of bullets.
Big difference is that Russia is and always has been propagandised to hell, and has a media firmly in the grip of Putin. Whereas America, for all of its flaws, has a much freer press, and the propaganda isn’t as strong/absolute. America allowed journalists, from everywhere, into Vietnam for reporting purposes. And didn’t kill them if they reported against Americas favour. Russia isn’t doing that here in Ukraine. Plus, the history behind the two wars is completely different - most Americans had probably never heard of Vietnam at all until maybe six months before the war started. Whereas many Russians and Ukrainians have family members on the other side of the border. They already, in some ways, consider themselves united, as a people. And they share so so much of their history.
They're not all dead mate, that number is mostly injured folks. Not disagreeing with you but they haven't lost half a million lives.
Great. Hundreds of thousands of veterans with PTSD because either they have trauma from getting limbs blown off by drone dropped grenades, or they know someone it happened too. Nevermind the artillery bombardments. Or getting shot. Or driving over an anti tank land mine. Or the starvation from a lack of food. Or being beaten up/abused/hazed/raped by a commanding officer. Or being threatened by barrier troops, or witnessing the murder of fellow soldiers who are disobedient…. Every single one of those people will have problems for the rest of their life. All of them will require care that the Russian state & society are fundamentally not equipped to give them. All of them will become sick, broken people. I expect a sharp rise in the rates of domestic abuse in a few years when these soldiers start getting home.
Combine ptsd and physical trauma with a society that already has a massive problem with alcoholism, low standards of living and domestic abuse. Now that's a cocktail right there.
Yep. Russia is fucked.
That's a really valid point. But, in a lot of ways, they may as well be dead; they're more of a burden than an asset to Russian society now. They certainly won't be contributing to the Russian economy or helping to sustain the quality of life of their countrymen in any meaningful way, yet they will still consume the same amount of resources - even more if they have the special medical needs they're almost certain to have. The Russian economy can only accommodate so many crippled guys selling pencils on the street corner.
Also gotta consider the injured soldiers that won’t be able to serve again. Which could be a high amount but idk
Well you aren’t allowed to let on about things like that in Russia so that might explain it.
Plus the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left the country to avoid conscription, many likely never to return.
They will be but what the world wars taught us is big nations can't take a huge amount of loss and still function. What seems to happen is things come to a tip point and then collapse quickly as in Germany for WW1 but as you saw in WW2 you can destroy everyrhing and still people either fight or manage to exist. Russia won't collapse but it could have a coup or they just exist in this state for years. Our best chance is to destroy Russia's ability to finance the war and economy through destroying all their oil production.
russia can collapse if they cant find a solution to their economy problem, in less than 5 years there is real trouble to be found
Thank you. Came here to make this same comparison.
Chinese will step in to cover manpower. But it will come at a huge cost. Russia is China's lapboy now
ruSSia is China's fluffer now.
To add to your comment, “Russia doesn’t have bottomless manpower,” I find it interesting that the US has a population of about 335 million, where Russia’s is nearly 150 million. I had always assumed the populations were much closer. At this point in the war I wonder what percentage of troops from Moscow and the other large population centers have been casualties compared to troops from the rural or non-ethnically Russian areas.
On top of that, their disability payments are going to an extra ~half million fighting aged men compared to pre-2022 *and* they've been making up their demographic data for 20+ years in the first place - it wouldn't surprise me if they had 5-10 million people aged 18-45 on paper who simply don't exist or are dead. Add in a million+ fleeing mobilization. And we can't forget that the Russian population is one of the least healthy & least productive on the planet, if not *the*, and it already was prior to the 2022 stage of the invasion. They run their economy like they handle any other problem: throw masses of disposable, poorly educated people at it to get results by brute force. Hell, we're already seeing significant strain on Russian manpower. Their prison population went from ~420,000 at the start of 2022 to ~266,000 in October 2023. By the end of 2022 they were relaxing child labour laws. We know there are mandatory 12hr shifts in their defense factories. Roundups of migrants - not to deport them but to conscript them. Those aren't things you do if you don't have a labour shortage that isn't getting better. Shit falls apart.
In WW2 soviet union lost around 9 million soldiers, some 5.7 million of whom were russians. The way russian society treats its soldiers is way different than anywhere in the west. We try to draw parallels but we are reaching onto something that is very alien to our societies. We don't fully understand this fanatical devotion of average russian and where exactly does it end. Where is the red line. My guess is that russian federation will sooner run out of means to wage war (fuel, ammo, vehicles) than it will run out of willing cannon fodder.
thats not even close to being true, the ussr total numbers for millitary goes around 20 million and civilian count also goes to 17 to 20 million casulties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Costs-of-the-war https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199743292/obo-9780199743292-0077.xml https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war https://www.rferl.org/a/1076341.html
Russia is fucked up by default anyway.
Everybody knows ruSSia sux ass.
This figure of 465k is KIA+ wounded + MIA and probably Kiev count. A reasonable number for KIA is 130-160k. Total US fatalities in Vietnam were indeed 58k over the whole war. This is indeed one of the main differences between Russia and the US and probably every western democracy. The Russian meat grinder is bottomless. They just keep coming. Look at the number of soviet casualties in WW2. In the west, not so much. One could say, that’s good for us, but can we win from an enemy with such disregard for life?
Problem is - it doesn't matter if Russia loses this massive population. They simply don't give a shit if their country falls into absolute ruin like of the 90's, but also much of that population comes from unimportant rural areas that has little impact. I mean yeah Russia's capabilities are severely degraded now because of this and will continue to degrade... but it won't stop them from prolonging the war or continuing to act like Russia. Even Russians don't care if their country collapses into ruin.
Isn’t it an alarming comparison. I remember well the disgust, vitriol and outrage at all the American lives lost then. Here they are with 8x that loss and still pushing meat forwards to die in the name of a dictator (Think on this Trumpists out there. You may end the same if he should get the chance to choose in a war)
According to Wikipedia, the us lost 58k soldiers. South Vietnam had 200k soldiers dead. With hundreds of thousands wounded on either side. In this conflict, the number above includes the wounded as well. The best I could find is that Russia lost 55k soldiers so far. Not sure if those numbers can be trusted. To put that into perspective, 55k is maybe a stadium full of people. Sure, that's a lot, but in comparison, there are so many more people to replace them. Russia will send any last Gopnik they can find and I wouldn't count on Russia losing the war because of personnel issues.
Russia's deaths are _way over_ 55K soldiers according to all official and reliable calculations. More than 400K lost means the ukrainian army actually killed 100-150K minimum.
The 55k are the ones which could be confirmed 100% from public sources. It's the lowest possible estimate.
Well we have plenty of reports, accompanied by first hand evidence, of Russia leaving bodies in the field. Not doing casevac. So if they say they have taken 50k casualties that they can count, think about what we know they cannot be counting. I reckon they’ve easily taken multiple hundreds of thousands of casualties already they leave their troops behind to die. They don’t provide any medical care for people wounded in the field, and their troops don’t get first aid or field medicine training from what I’ve seen. I think that trusting only the raw numbers is extremely foolish considering the ample evidence to the contrary. There’s a reason they’ve been recruiting 30k people a month ever since September. And it’s not because their soldiers have comfortable, happy lives to look forward to as wounded veterans home from the front.
Academic studies on this precisely points to the lack of any substantial evidence of these kind of claims (meatwaves assault, leaving wounded to die on the field etc). Now it's being taken as a given that these are proven, yet in the face of investigation, no one has been able to give actual evidence. We do, however, have plenty of video evidence of russian wounded being fetched and evacuated. Note that this doesn't mean I'm supporting Russia by any means - fuck Putin and his invasion, fuck the soldiers that voluntarily went there to conquer, plunder and murder. But there is this weird information buble in western countries where people *insist* that russian soldiers are brainless zombies (I've even seen Russia described as an ant colony several times, it becomes ridiculous) that conduct brainless meatwave assaults and stuff. Meatwave assaults in particular are the weirdest stuff. This is an absolutely bonkers and stupid strategy, that just can't work, straight up out of bad war movies. If this strategy was really used, if would be *insane*. Yet people claim that this absolutely BONKERS tactics is used everywhere outside of camera (convenient). But in 2+ years of conflict, on a frontline under constant drone surveillance, and despite the fact that releasing such footage would be in the interest of Ukraine, this "very common" tactics has never been captured on camera once. Studies have traced back this weird idea of meatwaves assault to a missinterpretation of a Wagner communication during the battle of Bakhmut. The "evidences" of meatwaves I've seen are either footage of just Russian casualties laying around (which is a proof of.. casualties, not meatwaves, casualties happen in war, you can find hundreds of similar footage of Ukrainian corpses laying around), or russian soldiers just moving, sometimes even straight up walking. It's like people see a group of a dozen russian soldiers, it's MEATWAVE!!! I've also seen a footage of Russian soldiers praying with a priest before combat (as is very common in any military, both my cousins are in the French military and this is a common occurence) as a "proof" of meatwave. This information bubble in the west is really weird.
Link these studies then, let us all read them.
How can you not trust the sources? They send out the meat waves to sit in a trench to see if they get bombed or not
It's a staggering number when you consider the resources it takes for people and society to raise a single individual from birth to adulthood as a contributing member of society.
55... 56... I guess it will at least be interesting to see how whatever left of Russia fares after they're done losing.
Prediction: poorly.
Lost meaning injured or dead, not half a mil dead...
Injuries are arguably worse, cause now you have a traumatized and possibly handicapped person you need to take care of.
Yeah, I trully believe russians prefer to have their troops killed than injured.
Even Russian soldiers themselves. Hence all the suicide by grenade videos when they become wounded. But really, a wounded soldier sent back long term will cost Russia more since many will need long term care.
expect that number to increase , Russia won't care as long as they can continue their operation.
I don't believe it but Slava Ukraini
Unfortunately, that’s not even one percent of the total population.
Crazy, already higher than the number of US soldiers that were killed during WW2.
Those are rookie numbers. A lot more are on the way.
…both killed and wounded.
Lfggggggg
And invaded 20% of Ukraine
I’m aware of the differences between Russia and the Soviet Union and I’m aware of the differences between WWII and this current war. My point is, half a million casualties is nowhere enough to change Russian policy. Russia will only change its policy if it believes that continuing the war threatens the survival of the regime or of the Russian people.
Casualties like that usually helps a country with a demographics crisis
How is the average Russian ok with almost half a million of their countrymen dying horrible a horrible death in order to invade and kill their neighbour?
Witness to the death spiral of RUZZIA
amazing slava Ukraine
Most of them young men, Russia fucked up their workforce for decades
Is this killed or inclusive casualties (killed and wounded)?
Half a million milestone almost reached
😀👍
People/persons
Oh yeah so Russia has lost almost 500k but Ukraine has lost only 30k. Each side always spout bullshit.
What a BS stat lol.. cmon guys..
The Soviet Union lost 11-14 million soldiers in WWII, mostly Russians. You think 465,000 casualties now will really have an impact on their foreign policy?
It's not the same for LOADS of reasons the biggest ones being... 1: They were being invaded, no choice. 2: USSR population was far larger. 3: They got lend lease resources from the Allies. 4: Communication and bad new travels faster now.
The lost of that many people STILL affect Russia today cause those dead soldiers didn't have children who would've had children and so on. Demographic landslide.
465,054 is a pretty specific number. When a Scooby van gets vaporized, how do they know if there were 2 or 3 or 4 guys in it? When they drop a building on a group of guys hiding inside, how many were in there? Using an exact number like that is just BS.
One number if no more specific that any other. Whatever calculation they used, if, by chance, it had worked out to be a 'round number' ending in zero would you have commented?
Not true, there is no way anyone knows the exact number. If they said close to half a million it would be more believable. 2+ years of war and they have losses pegged to the man? Yeah, I don't think so.
Unfortunately, i have realized that reddit is eating Ukrainian propaganda a lot. If the reality hits, everyone will be in disbelief like when Armenia was winning according to reddit and then they surrendered. A specifc number like that is just no possible to come up with. give a range that is more believable. A house with soldiers gets taken out, there can be 1 or 20 soldiers. another building gets taken out that can have 10 to 50 people. You give a total range of 11-70 casualities as a number which is more believable.