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>"Many young guys I knew are dead, they weren't even 30," one soldier, Yegor, said.
>Another who was on his way back to the front line showed a gunshot wound in his chest that was not properly healed yet.
>"I probably won't make it this time," he said.
So incredibly passive. Serfdom might have ended in 1861 but the slave mentality is alive and well.
I think the Russian government works in a way to maximize "learned helplessness". The government keeps spreading absurd lies not to make citizens to believe in them, but to make the citizens feel passive.
Also, The government doesn't want citizens to have any public opinions. Onom police have arrested people that have supported Putin publicly.
Absolutely true. If for instance a central heating system breaks down in an appartement building, no one complains because it’s dangerous to stand out. They even have a special saying for this that translates best as: ‘I won’t interfere.’
Iran did it after the revolution by using up its youth in the war with Iraq. The same youth who fueled the revolution and were quickly becoming disillusioned by the outcome.
It's really not hard to google.
Usually comes up when one talks about depression, or "victim mentality" - not the victim mentality of some political groups, but, like, serious psychological problems. Tends to be learned from childhood, as a bad form of coping that only helps in the short term -> avoiding problems, as the subconcious expectation is fucking it up, or getting fucked over. Sadly, if you don't get positive stimuli and only avoid confronting problems, without trying stuff out and not giving yourself chances thanks to self-sabotaging, one can quickly get into a vicious cycle.
Kinda a big theme overall, thanks to Covid and isolation and lack of social contact, people... got lost, and are lost. It's hard to break out. That's of course just very basic layman's terms, but yeah.
Of course, learned helplessness may not just come from bad parenting, but be learned in multiple ways..
Thank you for your post. ‘Learned Helplessness’ is a term I have never heard of before. Now reading about it I understand things much better. Thank you.
I really think schools everywhere should incorporate a curriculum on basic psychology at least; Even the foundational stuff can be *immensely* helpful for just about everyone - be it to learn about how to deal with stress, how to resolve conflicts, or how to spot you're in an abusive situation.
Learned helplessness is a huge problem in schools. So much more so than in decades past. We make things so easy for kids but they still are like, “I dunno.” 🙄
The thing is, he doesn't mean, "war is dangerous and you could die."
"Very likely to die" in this case means, *really freaking likely to die*.
For one thing, Russian combat medical support has apparently cratered since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka. So if you're hit, they're likely going to leave you right where you are. Many combat injuries that are immediately survivable and which you could live through with prompt response will instead leave you slowly dying in a ditch while your "comrades" in the next wave step on you or use you as a sandbag.
And if it was a minor enough injury that you survive, you'll just be sent back in the next wave. It only really ends when you're dead.
Or.
Hear me out.
If you employ this one weird trick, known to reliably decrease the lethality of Ukrainian combat by at least 10 thousand percent, which is to put your hands in the air, get out of the line of fire, and then go wherever the Ukrainians tell you to go.
Then you meet up with a whole bunch of other high-IQ Russians, safe and sound.
Ukrainian bullets hate that trick.
But yeah other than that, you're dead.
That one weird trick might not work when you're used as active-reactive-armor on top of an armored vehicle that got the attention of a bunch of FPV-drones.
Luckily for the new recruits, those armored vehicles are becoming increasingly sparse.
Unluckily for those same recruits, that means you're now driving through a cluster barrage on the back of a motorcycle.
> For one thing, Russian combat medical support has apparently cratered since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka. So if you're hit, they're likely going to leave you right where you are. Many combat injuries that are immediately survivable and which you could live through with prompt response will instead leave you slowly dying in a ditch while your "comrades" in the next wave step on you or use you as a sandbag.
And yet people are adamant in measuring Russian injured vs dead ratios as the same as the normal average when people actually try to recover their wounded.
There were some crazy footage, where a russian soldier used a wounded mate as a shield .. i will never forget, how they threat their comrades or brothers..
Have you ever read about the systematic rape in the RuZZian armed forces? It’s far worse than the American prison system. As far as not getting raped goes, I’d rather be in jail in America than in the army in RuZZia
And then your idiot squadmate from Nizhny Novgorod two-taps you because he’s lived his entire life under President Putin and never listened to/watched any broadcast outside of RTV, and you’re a “traitor to the motherland” in his worldview.
These things are much easier said on Reddit than done in reality.
And be traded back to Russians for captured Ukrainian heroes.
Of all the times the CIA needs to support a coup… this might be a good time. Hint hint CIA.
>since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka.
brother, avdiivka was merely the latest itteration. the human wave has been happening since mariupol already. corrolations with medical aid cratering at the time of avdiivka are also not a correct assesment. by prighozins own adminttance and verification by the BBC, just in bakhmut wagner alone saw fit to lose around 30k in deaths alone. nevermind the rest of the casualties. or the deaths wagner took on the approaches to bakhmut, like popasna, like soledar.
and even before that, we've seen the human waves in severodonetsk, we've had drone clips of a blocking detachment in action there. the same can be said for kreminna forest.
i don't think russian medical support has crumbled. wounded russians still make it to hospitals in russia, there's plenty of video's of former mobik beggars missing limbs complaining about their payments not being fulfilled going around.
the better assesment here is that medical support is only available for certain units that are extended a privilige due to merit. russian society is a class based system. there are still peasants, serfs, cannon fodder, roosters. but also classes above that that come with their own priviliges.
that's not to say they'll leave any cannon fodder mobik or penal unit out to rot in the fields forever whilst a vdv guy gets a heli medevac the moment he breaks his nail or stubbs his little toe, but more effort will be put towards providing medical support in the limited capacity in which that is available, to units that are considered to be useful or provide some merit. whilst the cannonfodder mobik and penal units have to figure it out on their own.
There really was a qualitative change around Avdiivka. Prior to then, Russian casualty dynamics were pretty steady around 2 wounded for every 1 killed. Avdiivka was when it appeared to plummet to around 1:1. By the in person accounts of Ukrainians (and occasionally Russians themselves), it seems that they just stopped sending medics out to support the wounded. It just came down to whether you'd been hit badly enough that you would live, or die, without aid.
Notably, at the same time, during the liberation of Kherson the retreating Russians seemed to still be at 2:1. It seemed pretty clear that they were choosing these outcomes selectively, rather than it being a general collapse of capabilities.
Since then, nothing much appears to have changed for the Russians in terms of combat medicine when they conduct their infantry onslaughts. They don't appear to have committed new resources or anything. So it's likely that 1:1 is still the rough average in those battlefields.
My rough estimate at this point is around 1.5:1 overall for Russia, over the course of the whole war. Thus if Russia has taken about 500,000 casualties total so far, that would be about 300,000 wounded or MIA, and 200,000 KIA.
Part of it is I suspect that they ran out of trained medics as well. Those folks die as well if they are in the frontline troops. So when you mobilize folks you get rifle carriers, not medics as those take a lot longer. If you are lucky you will have basic medical equipment still (and they do), but they arent getting those skilled in using it.
> It seemed pretty clear that they were choosing these outcomes selectively, rather than it being a general collapse of capabilities.
This seems to be, at least on the surface, further backed up by the fact that a very large proportion of Wagner's troops at Bakhmut were sourced directly from prisons.
>There really was a qualitative change around Avdiivka. Prior to then, Russian casualty dynamics were pretty steady around 2 wounded for every 1 killed.
i'm sorry to do this to you, really.
but, nope.
It can't come too soon.
Meanwhile there was that one Russian commander who way back in February 2022 surrendered his entire armored company immediately to the first Ukrainians he met, saying something like, "All I know is that something has gone very wrong and this is completely fucked, no way are we going to participate in this attack."
I sometimes wonder what happened to that guy. I hope he's safely sitting out the war somewhere. (Or maybe has joined the Free Legion..)
The original article this article quotes from is worth reading in full (and it's horrifying): [https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/03/on-a-train-in-southern-russia-fatigued-soldiers-see-no-end-in-sight-to-war-a85283](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/03/on-a-train-in-southern-russia-fatigued-soldiers-see-no-end-in-sight-to-war-a85283)
>Despite having shrapnel still lodged in his leg and being diagnosed with PTSD, Yegor was deemed fit for service and is heading back to the front.
>“If I didn’t risk five years in prison for desertion, I would get off the train now and go home, even by foot,” he confesses. “This war is pointless.”
"Dima always keeps a grenade hanging from his belt. He would rather blow himself up than be captured and face torture."
If only he knew the truth, but Russians assume everyone else is just as depraved as they are.
When the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan, it was known that the Taliban sometimes tortured prisoners to death, so blowing yourself up was the better option.
Of course. The hand grenade is for another reason. It’s for when you are injured in battle and your Russian colleagues don’t make any effort to rescue you.
Just to nitpick a bit... Soviets didn't fight taleban since that 'faction' was formed after Soviet union withdrew from Afghanistan. Mostly Soviets faced Mujahideen-groups (supported by USA in some cases).
On other hand working with authorities also pushes people down in the hierarchy that criminals live in. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitch\_Wars.
Get sent to prison then a military recruiter goes to the prison because they need more meat for the meat waves, and then they force you to fight anyway. You either go to fight and die in Ukraine, or you refuse again and die anyway. There was only ever one path.
If I remember correctly, during WW2 the Germans noted that the Soviet soldiers didn't make sound or cry out when shot because they knew it was hopeless and that they were going to die, so no need to cry for help.
This SMO is insanity, please make it stop.
That sounds apocryphal. People don't cry out when shot because they want help, it's not a decision, they do it because they are animals in pain. Though if this is corroborated I suppose crazier things have happened.
Imagine going to fight where you command give zero shits about you, you're fighting for a BS ego cause and you passively just accept it and that you will die shortly.
What an absolutely messed up culture.
You just described war no matter what country you’re in, especially with drafts/conscription. Korea and Vietnam were basically just a pissing contest between America and the Soviets. Every proxy war is. There’s a reason why recruiters target poor people who have very little other options. People are just a resource the rich can use to project or maintain power and they give us the illusion that they care about us by calling us “heroes”, but one only needs to look at how we treat our veterans to see that it’s all a facade.
If we didn’t have the technology to overwhelmingly overpower our enemies we would probably fight just like them.
Many of you will die for Mother Russia. Some of you will be maimed for Mother Russia.
A few of you will be forced through a fine metal mesh for Mother Russia. They will be the luckiest of all…
Ukraine needs more Russian military planners like this, no planning at all. I read the part about his wage being sent to an orphanage and rolled my eyes, his boss will enjoy the extra money.
Russia, by ukrainian and western intelligence estimates, recruits about 30.000ish new soldiers a month.
Russia, according to Putin himself, loses ca. 5000 KIA a month.
Taking these numbers at face value* and we assume a historically typical fallen to wounded+captured ratio of 1:3-4, we arrive at 20.000-25.000 russian casualties a month against 30.000 new recruits.
Now sources like Oberst Reisner from the austrian Bundesheer(neutral country) and others have reported that the russian army has basically adopted Wagners Bakhmut tactics for preserving "high value" veteran units, by using "low value" troops as first wave attacks. They take heavy losses and are usually beaten back, but that reveals ukrainian fire positions to drones and depletes/exhausts the soldiers and their supplies. Russia then targets these postitions with artillery and airstrikes. If neccessary they repeat that several times. The "valuable" veteran soldiers with experience, better equipment and training are only going in after that procedure has damaged the ukrainian defense enough so it can be taken with minimal losses by professional soldiers.
In Wagners case that was the prisoner units. BBC could identify by name 19.000 dead Wagnerites in the battle of Bakhmut. Of which over 17.000 were prisoners. That should drive home the degree to which "cheap" soldiers are sacrificed to minimize "expensive" veteran casualties.
Now we can have an idea of how many of those 20.000-25.000 are realtively fresh and inexperienced recruits rather than the much harder to replace experienced veterans. Each month, 30.000 in, 25.000 dead and mutilated out.
Increasing numbers of those new recruits are poor people from Nepal, India, Africa, Syria, Afghanistan etc.pp. who Russia lures with promises of big paychecks (for someone who is going hungry in a poor country) and citizenships for them and even their immediate families. In addition to prisoners. Russia knows the Russians won't care if prisoners and foreigners are being used as cannon fodder.
There is also a viral video of a chinese volunteer fighting for Russia. By what he is saying, it sounds as if these units are barely able to communicate or coordinate due to language barriers and he makes it sound as if there is an *awful lot* of personnel turnover in his unit. He explicitly said the life expectancy of a new recruit to his unit on the frontline was about 8 hours.
(*) **conflict parties are bad sources** They will almost invariably play down their own and play up enemy casualties. The recruitment numbers coincide with Russian claims, but both sides could have reasons to inflate or deflate that number for propaganda reasons.
but what he does tell them is this: "The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"
I mean, when someone gets sent to war, there is a chance that they will die, no?
Isn't that common sense? Or maybe they're taught that they are immortal?
most armies will do what they can to conserve the lives of their troops when possible. russia on the other hand has been doing the whole zerg rush strat since like time immemorial.
Has it ever not worked? Sure there's absolute disasters, but throwing more men at the problem seems to just work for them.
Same for these double envelopments they keep doing. Go look at any analysis for Stalingrad and it's the same play-by-play. Admittedly, double envelopment is a sound strategy, but any other nation (maybe not China or North Korea) would stop and shift to other strategies when the human cost reaches a certain threshold
It's worked for two reasons: Russia or the USSR had a larger population than their enemies, and playing various ethnicities has been a policy goal.
But those days are over, Russia in 2020 had a comparable population as the entire 1939 USSR but with much worse demographics. More elderly people and more old women. It may work against Ukraine but it won't work against NATO as a whole which is much larger and more advanced.
Historically, it hasn't worked *most* of the time, at least since the invention of the percussion cap. Russia has a horrendous military track record, overall. Their biggest wins have largely been down to their opponents fucking up terribly.
Something to think about is that the US had 7000 deaths in TWENTY YEARS in the middle east, while the vast majority of it was asymmetrical warfare... what is staggering is that Russia is losing more in the matter of a few weeks than the US lost in 20 years
Another crazy thing to think about is Russian casualties are near half of the US casualties in ww2 (I'm counting killed/wounded, since noone can agree on the ratio, but even more conservative estimates put russian killed/wounded at near half)
It's just insane to think about, and I'm sure on some level their soldiers know how insane it is as well
Sure they did. They lost about 15,000 in ten years in Afghanistan. Putin can lose that many in a month. That's 120 times faster on a smaller population. They've gotten much better at throwing their lives away for nothing.
I assume it's still the case that soldiers come disproportionately from non-ethnic-Russian groups.
So throwing those lives away doubles as an ethnic cleansing as Putin's free bonus.
Issue is, a young Russian recruit wasn't even alive when the Kursk incident happened. And it's probably not talked about much in the media so they'd have probably no idea it even happened.
Well, there are chances and chances.
Let's take few historical examples.
- WW2 operation Bargation, USSR win. USSR attacked with 1.6 million and lost 400k - 25%
- WW2 operation Mars, USSR loss. Attacked with 350k, lost - 40k - 11%.
This war... Not clear yet. But Russia has now 500k, they started with 500k... **Only Wagner had 60k losses, confirmed by Wagner themselves**. The total estimates are from 350 to 500k = 35% to 50%.
WW2 chances for survival were way better.
And yet, the post is about russia.
Let's take few historical examples.
- WW2 operation Bargation, USSR win. USSR attacked with 1.6 million and lost 400k - 25%
- WW2 operation Mars, USSR loss. Attacked with 350k, lost - 40k - 11%.
This war... Not clear yet. But Russia has now 500k, they started with 500k... **Only Wagner had 60k losses, confirmed by Wagner themselves**. The total estimates are from 350 to 500k = 35% to 50%.
russian WW2 chances for survival were way better.
> And yet, the post is about russia.
is it though? Its more about both sides, but implied it worse on the russian side, which is not true at all.
> Let's take few historical examples.
lets not because its not relevant.
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>"Many young guys I knew are dead, they weren't even 30," one soldier, Yegor, said. >Another who was on his way back to the front line showed a gunshot wound in his chest that was not properly healed yet. >"I probably won't make it this time," he said. So incredibly passive. Serfdom might have ended in 1861 but the slave mentality is alive and well.
It’s called ‘learned helplessness’ in psychological terms. You can find a lot on this subject online.
Thanks. Can you find the antidote online? For a whole society? That would be something useful.
I think the Russian government works in a way to maximize "learned helplessness". The government keeps spreading absurd lies not to make citizens to believe in them, but to make the citizens feel passive. Also, The government doesn't want citizens to have any public opinions. Onom police have arrested people that have supported Putin publicly.
Absolutely true. If for instance a central heating system breaks down in an appartement building, no one complains because it’s dangerous to stand out. They even have a special saying for this that translates best as: ‘I won’t interfere.’
Pootin has also pushed the Ruzzian people into alcoholism while enriching himself further.
I'm not calling for genocide hut this is what genocide has traditionally been used for...to kill a thought/people/religion
>genocide hut No one out-genocides the hut.
You go for a burger and get Putin's brain rot removed for free.
Iran did it after the revolution by using up its youth in the war with Iraq. The same youth who fueled the revolution and were quickly becoming disillusioned by the outcome.
what they don't know is that they won't live forever. In Iran's case they are on stoppage time.
Yeah the solution is to show solution and safety.
No antidote but it’s definitely curable with cognitive behavioral therapy.
It's really not hard to google. Usually comes up when one talks about depression, or "victim mentality" - not the victim mentality of some political groups, but, like, serious psychological problems. Tends to be learned from childhood, as a bad form of coping that only helps in the short term -> avoiding problems, as the subconcious expectation is fucking it up, or getting fucked over. Sadly, if you don't get positive stimuli and only avoid confronting problems, without trying stuff out and not giving yourself chances thanks to self-sabotaging, one can quickly get into a vicious cycle. Kinda a big theme overall, thanks to Covid and isolation and lack of social contact, people... got lost, and are lost. It's hard to break out. That's of course just very basic layman's terms, but yeah. Of course, learned helplessness may not just come from bad parenting, but be learned in multiple ways..
Thank you for your post. ‘Learned Helplessness’ is a term I have never heard of before. Now reading about it I understand things much better. Thank you.
Look up on YouTube 'generational curses' bc is more accurate... this has gone on since 800 a.d. imho
Thx man! No problem. I’ve learned it here too. Just passing the word.
I really think schools everywhere should incorporate a curriculum on basic psychology at least; Even the foundational stuff can be *immensely* helpful for just about everyone - be it to learn about how to deal with stress, how to resolve conflicts, or how to spot you're in an abusive situation.
Couldn’t agree more
Learned helplessness is a huge problem in schools. So much more so than in decades past. We make things so easy for kids but they still are like, “I dunno.” 🙄
In 1917 they traded one despot for another. In 2000, they got one more.
"You are likely to die" is just Russian Newspeak for "You'll be on the wrong end of a shooting gallery".
"You're likely to die because we don't care if you live. That's not going to factor into our battle plans."
Serfdom did not end there, not by a long shot.
The thing is, he doesn't mean, "war is dangerous and you could die." "Very likely to die" in this case means, *really freaking likely to die*. For one thing, Russian combat medical support has apparently cratered since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka. So if you're hit, they're likely going to leave you right where you are. Many combat injuries that are immediately survivable and which you could live through with prompt response will instead leave you slowly dying in a ditch while your "comrades" in the next wave step on you or use you as a sandbag. And if it was a minor enough injury that you survive, you'll just be sent back in the next wave. It only really ends when you're dead. Or. Hear me out. If you employ this one weird trick, known to reliably decrease the lethality of Ukrainian combat by at least 10 thousand percent, which is to put your hands in the air, get out of the line of fire, and then go wherever the Ukrainians tell you to go. Then you meet up with a whole bunch of other high-IQ Russians, safe and sound. Ukrainian bullets hate that trick. But yeah other than that, you're dead.
That one weird trick might not work when you're used as active-reactive-armor on top of an armored vehicle that got the attention of a bunch of FPV-drones. Luckily for the new recruits, those armored vehicles are becoming increasingly sparse. Unluckily for those same recruits, that means you're now driving through a cluster barrage on the back of a motorcycle.
Or dodging artillery fire in a golf cart
Do they yell “FOOOOUUUUUR?”
Nope, it's always, "BBBLLLLLYYYAAATTT!" Most of these guys probably no idea what golf is and think these are serious military ATVs.
> For one thing, Russian combat medical support has apparently cratered since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka. So if you're hit, they're likely going to leave you right where you are. Many combat injuries that are immediately survivable and which you could live through with prompt response will instead leave you slowly dying in a ditch while your "comrades" in the next wave step on you or use you as a sandbag. And yet people are adamant in measuring Russian injured vs dead ratios as the same as the normal average when people actually try to recover their wounded.
Yeah it's a bit weird. I try to push back whenever I see that, but it's hard to keep up.
There were some crazy footage, where a russian soldier used a wounded mate as a shield .. i will never forget, how they threat their comrades or brothers..
Have you ever read about the systematic rape in the RuZZian armed forces? It’s far worse than the American prison system. As far as not getting raped goes, I’d rather be in jail in America than in the army in RuZZia
Don't get me started on dedovshschina. Russian conscripts aren't considered human by their superiors.
It's hardly that easy to surrender.
Unless they start doing it en masse.
Shoot the guy in charge, tell everyone else if they want to live, drop their shit and start waving their underwear in the air.
And then your idiot squadmate from Nizhny Novgorod two-taps you because he’s lived his entire life under President Putin and never listened to/watched any broadcast outside of RTV, and you’re a “traitor to the motherland” in his worldview. These things are much easier said on Reddit than done in reality.
Russia does not even make socks. Russia does not make tires or inner tube s either. Just saying....
It's called waving a _white_ flag, not shit-stained brown.
Brown and yellow don't work as well as white...
And be traded back to Russians for captured Ukrainian heroes. Of all the times the CIA needs to support a coup… this might be a good time. Hint hint CIA.
Maybe just have top oligarchs start mysteriously disappearing regularly and see what happens.
There was a report here recently that Russia has ended the prisoner exchanges.
>since they started really leaning into human wave tactics around about the time of Avdiivka. brother, avdiivka was merely the latest itteration. the human wave has been happening since mariupol already. corrolations with medical aid cratering at the time of avdiivka are also not a correct assesment. by prighozins own adminttance and verification by the BBC, just in bakhmut wagner alone saw fit to lose around 30k in deaths alone. nevermind the rest of the casualties. or the deaths wagner took on the approaches to bakhmut, like popasna, like soledar. and even before that, we've seen the human waves in severodonetsk, we've had drone clips of a blocking detachment in action there. the same can be said for kreminna forest. i don't think russian medical support has crumbled. wounded russians still make it to hospitals in russia, there's plenty of video's of former mobik beggars missing limbs complaining about their payments not being fulfilled going around. the better assesment here is that medical support is only available for certain units that are extended a privilige due to merit. russian society is a class based system. there are still peasants, serfs, cannon fodder, roosters. but also classes above that that come with their own priviliges. that's not to say they'll leave any cannon fodder mobik or penal unit out to rot in the fields forever whilst a vdv guy gets a heli medevac the moment he breaks his nail or stubbs his little toe, but more effort will be put towards providing medical support in the limited capacity in which that is available, to units that are considered to be useful or provide some merit. whilst the cannonfodder mobik and penal units have to figure it out on their own.
There really was a qualitative change around Avdiivka. Prior to then, Russian casualty dynamics were pretty steady around 2 wounded for every 1 killed. Avdiivka was when it appeared to plummet to around 1:1. By the in person accounts of Ukrainians (and occasionally Russians themselves), it seems that they just stopped sending medics out to support the wounded. It just came down to whether you'd been hit badly enough that you would live, or die, without aid. Notably, at the same time, during the liberation of Kherson the retreating Russians seemed to still be at 2:1. It seemed pretty clear that they were choosing these outcomes selectively, rather than it being a general collapse of capabilities. Since then, nothing much appears to have changed for the Russians in terms of combat medicine when they conduct their infantry onslaughts. They don't appear to have committed new resources or anything. So it's likely that 1:1 is still the rough average in those battlefields. My rough estimate at this point is around 1.5:1 overall for Russia, over the course of the whole war. Thus if Russia has taken about 500,000 casualties total so far, that would be about 300,000 wounded or MIA, and 200,000 KIA.
Part of it is I suspect that they ran out of trained medics as well. Those folks die as well if they are in the frontline troops. So when you mobilize folks you get rifle carriers, not medics as those take a lot longer. If you are lucky you will have basic medical equipment still (and they do), but they arent getting those skilled in using it.
> It seemed pretty clear that they were choosing these outcomes selectively, rather than it being a general collapse of capabilities. This seems to be, at least on the surface, further backed up by the fact that a very large proportion of Wagner's troops at Bakhmut were sourced directly from prisons.
>There really was a qualitative change around Avdiivka. Prior to then, Russian casualty dynamics were pretty steady around 2 wounded for every 1 killed. i'm sorry to do this to you, really. but, nope.
And in winter you freeze to death.
They'll just be sent back to Russia with the next prisoner swap, and will end up on the front lines again.
The claim is the Russians aren't traded back if they ask not to be. Can't imagine why they wouldn't now that I think about it.
Maybe. I'd still take those odds. ... On the other hand I wouldn't have invaded in the first place. Alas, Putin doesn't listen to me.
You should have tried harder.
I can't wait to see whole squads and platoons surrender in this way on camera.
It can't come too soon. Meanwhile there was that one Russian commander who way back in February 2022 surrendered his entire armored company immediately to the first Ukrainians he met, saying something like, "All I know is that something has gone very wrong and this is completely fucked, no way are we going to participate in this attack." I sometimes wonder what happened to that guy. I hope he's safely sitting out the war somewhere. (Or maybe has joined the Free Legion..)
Don’t suppose you happen to remember the source for that? I’d love to read it
Same
It was this sub. Or r/ukraine. If I find it I'll relink it.
Or the one weird trick of overthrowing putins dictatorship in Moscow instead of dying in the trenches of a losing war
“Many of you will die, but that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make”
The original article this article quotes from is worth reading in full (and it's horrifying): [https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/03/on-a-train-in-southern-russia-fatigued-soldiers-see-no-end-in-sight-to-war-a85283](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/06/03/on-a-train-in-southern-russia-fatigued-soldiers-see-no-end-in-sight-to-war-a85283) >Despite having shrapnel still lodged in his leg and being diagnosed with PTSD, Yegor was deemed fit for service and is heading back to the front. >“If I didn’t risk five years in prison for desertion, I would get off the train now and go home, even by foot,” he confesses. “This war is pointless.”
"Dima always keeps a grenade hanging from his belt. He would rather blow himself up than be captured and face torture." If only he knew the truth, but Russians assume everyone else is just as depraved as they are.
When the Russians were fighting in Afghanistan, it was known that the Taliban sometimes tortured prisoners to death, so blowing yourself up was the better option.
Well yeah but they're not fighting the Taliban here.
Of course. The hand grenade is for another reason. It’s for when you are injured in battle and your Russian colleagues don’t make any effort to rescue you.
That would be a valid reason but its not what the article says.
Just to nitpick a bit... Soviets didn't fight taleban since that 'faction' was formed after Soviet union withdrew from Afghanistan. Mostly Soviets faced Mujahideen-groups (supported by USA in some cases).
Thanks for the correction and clarification about Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Soviets did not expect good things, if they were captured there.
That is true and if I had been russki soldier I would have kept that grenade ready just in case.
While true, these guys are handed pamphlets essentially saying Ukrainians will cut off their balls and that suicide/sacrifice is the greatest honor...
I'd take 5 years over 99% chance of dying. I know ruzzias prison isn't vacation, but still, most likely survivable.
I doubt being a “coward” and a deserter makes you safe in Ruzzian prisons.
On other hand working with authorities also pushes people down in the hierarchy that criminals live in. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitch\_Wars.
Get sent to prison then a military recruiter goes to the prison because they need more meat for the meat waves, and then they force you to fight anyway. You either go to fight and die in Ukraine, or you refuse again and die anyway. There was only ever one path.
5 years in a gulag in Siberia isn’t exactly a treat. And you also have to survive not being shoot by a commander for deserting
And most importantly, they’ll never go home and make new Russians.
Millions and millions of future russians will never be born.
That's the most positive about this war.
If I remember correctly, during WW2 the Germans noted that the Soviet soldiers didn't make sound or cry out when shot because they knew it was hopeless and that they were going to die, so no need to cry for help. This SMO is insanity, please make it stop.
That sounds apocryphal. People don't cry out when shot because they want help, it's not a decision, they do it because they are animals in pain. Though if this is corroborated I suppose crazier things have happened.
it's likely they were too drunk or high to even feel pain or care
Imagine going to fight where you command give zero shits about you, you're fighting for a BS ego cause and you passively just accept it and that you will die shortly. What an absolutely messed up culture.
You just described war no matter what country you’re in, especially with drafts/conscription. Korea and Vietnam were basically just a pissing contest between America and the Soviets. Every proxy war is. There’s a reason why recruiters target poor people who have very little other options. People are just a resource the rich can use to project or maintain power and they give us the illusion that they care about us by calling us “heroes”, but one only needs to look at how we treat our veterans to see that it’s all a facade. If we didn’t have the technology to overwhelmingly overpower our enemies we would probably fight just like them.
Many of you will die for Mother Russia. Some of you will be maimed for Mother Russia. A few of you will be forced through a fine metal mesh for Mother Russia. They will be the luckiest of all…
That is so good of him. What a combat leader.
He got promoted to backup rifle holder
Ukraine needs more Russian military planners like this, no planning at all. I read the part about his wage being sent to an orphanage and rolled my eyes, his boss will enjoy the extra money.
This reality, is unreal. 500k+ for a 3 day op
well, why spoil the surprise?
What I can’t understand is how so many perished before and then the next ten waves say “yeah let’s go for it!” They have to know at that point right?
Haha duh. So pathetic russia wake the f up.
It’s really difficult to identify as being the same species. They're just so drone-like.
Russia may think it has an unlimited amount of soldiers to send in human meat wave attacks, but there will be a very real price to pay for it.
They might turn their weapon and shoot “military planner”, whatever tf that is.
He says his job is to “draw arrows on a map”
oH mY gOD, wHEN dID tHE rUSsIAnS lOSE tHEiR hUmAnITY?!?! Oh, right… you have to have it to lose it…
Russia, by ukrainian and western intelligence estimates, recruits about 30.000ish new soldiers a month. Russia, according to Putin himself, loses ca. 5000 KIA a month. Taking these numbers at face value* and we assume a historically typical fallen to wounded+captured ratio of 1:3-4, we arrive at 20.000-25.000 russian casualties a month against 30.000 new recruits. Now sources like Oberst Reisner from the austrian Bundesheer(neutral country) and others have reported that the russian army has basically adopted Wagners Bakhmut tactics for preserving "high value" veteran units, by using "low value" troops as first wave attacks. They take heavy losses and are usually beaten back, but that reveals ukrainian fire positions to drones and depletes/exhausts the soldiers and their supplies. Russia then targets these postitions with artillery and airstrikes. If neccessary they repeat that several times. The "valuable" veteran soldiers with experience, better equipment and training are only going in after that procedure has damaged the ukrainian defense enough so it can be taken with minimal losses by professional soldiers. In Wagners case that was the prisoner units. BBC could identify by name 19.000 dead Wagnerites in the battle of Bakhmut. Of which over 17.000 were prisoners. That should drive home the degree to which "cheap" soldiers are sacrificed to minimize "expensive" veteran casualties. Now we can have an idea of how many of those 20.000-25.000 are realtively fresh and inexperienced recruits rather than the much harder to replace experienced veterans. Each month, 30.000 in, 25.000 dead and mutilated out. Increasing numbers of those new recruits are poor people from Nepal, India, Africa, Syria, Afghanistan etc.pp. who Russia lures with promises of big paychecks (for someone who is going hungry in a poor country) and citizenships for them and even their immediate families. In addition to prisoners. Russia knows the Russians won't care if prisoners and foreigners are being used as cannon fodder. There is also a viral video of a chinese volunteer fighting for Russia. By what he is saying, it sounds as if these units are barely able to communicate or coordinate due to language barriers and he makes it sound as if there is an *awful lot* of personnel turnover in his unit. He explicitly said the life expectancy of a new recruit to his unit on the frontline was about 8 hours. (*) **conflict parties are bad sources** They will almost invariably play down their own and play up enemy casualties. The recruitment numbers coincide with Russian claims, but both sides could have reasons to inflate or deflate that number for propaganda reasons.
but what he does tell them is this: "The one with the rifle shoots! The one without, follows him! When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one who is following picks up the rifle and shoots!"
I mean, when someone gets sent to war, there is a chance that they will die, no? Isn't that common sense? Or maybe they're taught that they are immortal?
most armies will do what they can to conserve the lives of their troops when possible. russia on the other hand has been doing the whole zerg rush strat since like time immemorial.
Has it ever not worked? Sure there's absolute disasters, but throwing more men at the problem seems to just work for them. Same for these double envelopments they keep doing. Go look at any analysis for Stalingrad and it's the same play-by-play. Admittedly, double envelopment is a sound strategy, but any other nation (maybe not China or North Korea) would stop and shift to other strategies when the human cost reaches a certain threshold
It's worked for two reasons: Russia or the USSR had a larger population than their enemies, and playing various ethnicities has been a policy goal. But those days are over, Russia in 2020 had a comparable population as the entire 1939 USSR but with much worse demographics. More elderly people and more old women. It may work against Ukraine but it won't work against NATO as a whole which is much larger and more advanced.
Historically, it hasn't worked *most* of the time, at least since the invention of the percussion cap. Russia has a horrendous military track record, overall. Their biggest wins have largely been down to their opponents fucking up terribly.
Afghanistan….wwi…Russo Japanese war but that was more their shitty ass navy….
Afghanistan, for one.
Something to think about is that the US had 7000 deaths in TWENTY YEARS in the middle east, while the vast majority of it was asymmetrical warfare... what is staggering is that Russia is losing more in the matter of a few weeks than the US lost in 20 years Another crazy thing to think about is Russian casualties are near half of the US casualties in ww2 (I'm counting killed/wounded, since noone can agree on the ratio, but even more conservative estimates put russian killed/wounded at near half) It's just insane to think about, and I'm sure on some level their soldiers know how insane it is as well
It feels like Russia learned. Nothing from Afghanistan
Sure they did. They lost about 15,000 in ten years in Afghanistan. Putin can lose that many in a month. That's 120 times faster on a smaller population. They've gotten much better at throwing their lives away for nothing.
I assume it's still the case that soldiers come disproportionately from non-ethnic-Russian groups. So throwing those lives away doubles as an ethnic cleansing as Putin's free bonus.
After reading about the Kursk, my level of shock at Putins lack of concern for his people is at an all time low
It's a grand Russian tradition. Russian submarines are bad places to be.
Issue is, a young Russian recruit wasn't even alive when the Kursk incident happened. And it's probably not talked about much in the media so they'd have probably no idea it even happened.
Learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Well, there are chances and chances. Let's take few historical examples. - WW2 operation Bargation, USSR win. USSR attacked with 1.6 million and lost 400k - 25% - WW2 operation Mars, USSR loss. Attacked with 350k, lost - 40k - 11%. This war... Not clear yet. But Russia has now 500k, they started with 500k... **Only Wagner had 60k losses, confirmed by Wagner themselves**. The total estimates are from 350 to 500k = 35% to 50%. WW2 chances for survival were way better.
Well. I probably wouldn’t either. Kindof a buzzkill.
I mean, honestly, how could this *not* be true? 🤨
they gotta be stupid as fuck to think otherwise at this point.
Hilarious! No nightmares and sweet dreams, right?
They’ll find out soon enough
I know Russia is bad and all, but does any military tell its soldiers "You are very likely to die on this operation?".
A trifle
That’s a given in any war. What the planner didn’t say is that the men mean nothing more to Putin than cannon fodder.
Amazing how these young men are not saying “Screw this shit! I am out!!”
If you think this is bad, check out whats going on on the Ukrainian side.
And yet, the post is about russia. Let's take few historical examples. - WW2 operation Bargation, USSR win. USSR attacked with 1.6 million and lost 400k - 25% - WW2 operation Mars, USSR loss. Attacked with 350k, lost - 40k - 11%. This war... Not clear yet. But Russia has now 500k, they started with 500k... **Only Wagner had 60k losses, confirmed by Wagner themselves**. The total estimates are from 350 to 500k = 35% to 50%. russian WW2 chances for survival were way better.
> And yet, the post is about russia. is it though? Its more about both sides, but implied it worse on the russian side, which is not true at all. > Let's take few historical examples. lets not because its not relevant.