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[The_Explorer]

https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/ukraine-russia-conflict-live-updates/news-story/66a590bb28fbca02e9e46db2edc962b3

China’s bombshell Russia move

A shocking Western intelligence report has revealed that China allegedly asked Russia not to invade Ukraine until after the Beijing Winter Olympics had concluded.

According to the New York Times, the report proves Beijing has prior knowledge of the invasion, which began on February 24 - just four days after the Olympic closing ceremony.

In fact, Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping of China in Beijing on February 4 ahead of the opening ceremony, raising eyebrows at the time.

It comes as China abstained from a UN vote condemning Russia’s invasion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/us/politics/russia-ukraine-china.html

So...china knew all along. Figured as much tbh.

[EuchreJack]

...yeah, like the New York Times is 100% accurate.

[Lord Shonus]

So, there's reports of the Russians possibly taking as many as 5000 KIA so far.  There's no confirmation, and that number is almost certainly way too high. But this is a number that is really hard to contextualize, so I did a little digging around.


5000 dead in 7 days would mean they were averaging 714 fatal casualties per day.

In the battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest battles in history, the German army suffered an average of just over 500 fatal casualties daily.

Granted, the different nature of the two wars makes such a comparison sketchy, and it further underlines that the estimate has to be taken with a huge grain of salt, but maybe this will give a little perspective.

[nenjin]

Better technology resulting in more deaths, I suppose? There weren't cruise missiles at Verdun. (Although plenty of artillery.)

[Il Palazzo]

Russians claim 10% of that number.

[Lord Shonus]

This is also a much higher intensity war - WWI battles tended to have lots of slow days punctuated by sudden incredibly lethal exchanges.


US figures are suggesting 1500 Russian KIA, which is a much less unreasonable 300/day. Which is also an insanely lethal fight.



My main goal was to give people some sort of yardstick to measure the claims by.

Russians claim 10% of that number.

They also claim something like 2 people captured by Ukraine, when there's video evidence of dozens or hundreds.

[Il Palazzo]

Sure. As always in such cases, the claims of the two sides provide upper and lower bounds for the real number.

[Lord Shonus]

Not always. In some categories there's video footage of more vehicles being destroyed than the Ukranians are claiming.



My intent was not to endorse one set of figures, but to help give an idea of what that might mean. Prompted by a guy going "5000 dead? That's all?" in one of my Discord groups.

[heydude6]

With that footage example, you should remember that there is also a lot of fake footage out there which could inflate your number. I hear a chunk of footage was taken from previous wars.

[Lord Shonus]

The sources I'm working off of are pretty solid about filtering that out, particularly since a lot of these units weren't lost at all in previous wars.

[MorleyDev]

For comparison, 179 British service personnel were killed during the entire war in Iraq, and 457 during the entire war in Afghanistan. Of the USA, 2401 died in Afghanistan and 4431 in Iraq.

So the most generous available numbers still amount to entire an entire modern wars worth of deaths happening in a matter of days.

[EuchreJack]

One also has to wonder about the capability of the Russians to treat their wounded.  Did they properly plan for wounded?

[Il Palazzo]

One also has to wonder about the capability of the Russians to treat their wounded.  Did they properly plan for wounded?

There were reports, prior to the invasion, of military hospitals being erected near the borders, where the 'just exercises' were taking place.

[EuchreJack]

One also has to wonder about the capability of the Russians to treat their wounded.  Did they properly plan for wounded?

There were reports, prior to the invasion, of military hospitals being erected near the borders, where the 'just exercises' were taking place.

That explains the high casualty rates, if those military hospitals were not moved forward during the conflict.
Time to binge watch MASH to determine competence at 1970s levels.
Relevant

[Frumple]

One also has to wonder about the capability of the Russians to treat their wounded.  Did they properly plan for wounded?

Like, it's extremely unlikely; we're still in the middle of a fucking world wide plague, and russia hasn't somehow magically avoided it (rather the opposite, really). Like most places that have fucked up plague response, their entire healthcare system has basically been shellacked, military included. Their capacity to handle trauma care is damn certain to be pretty severely impacted at the moment, just like every goddamn body else.

It's one of the myriad reasons the timing on all this was just staggeringly poor.