Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that US estimates of Russian losses in Ukraine had no basis and were “plucked from thin air.”
His comments came after the White House estimated Russia suffered 100,000 casualties over the last five months, including 20,000 killed. The White House offered no estimate on Ukrainian losses.
Peskov said that the US had no way to obtain the correct data on Russian casualties. The White House claimed about half of the casualties were fighters for the mercenary outfit Wagner Group, which has been doing much of the fighting in Bakhmut.
Both Russia and Ukraine have kept a tight lid on their casualties in the war. Last fall, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said both sides likely suffered over 100,000 casualties, but the numbers have not been confirmed.
When Pentagon documents allegedly leaked by Jack Teixeira first gained public attention, slides surfaced with vastly different casualty estimates.
One slide said 16,000 to 17,500 Russian soldiers had been killed while as many as 71,500 Ukrainian troops were killed, but US officials claimed to the media that the slide was altered on Russian Telegram channels. The other slide showed the Pentagon estimated between 35,500-43,000 Russians were killed in action, and 15,500-17,500 Ukrainian troops were killed.
The numbers I’ve read for the total amount of personal in the Wagner Group is 40 – 50,000. If half the putative 100,000 casualties were from the Wagner Group, then how can that group keep on fighting in Bakhmut?
In case you didn’t know, the frontline is not Bakhmut. It extends from Kharkiv to Crimea.
Wagner is still fighting because they have been reinforced by other private forces and the Russian Army. And Wagner can still put up a fight with 6-10 thousand mercenaries.
In case you didn’t know, most of Bakhmut is now behind the frontline – safe in the loving arms of Mother Russia.
Peace
So safe young Russian men are still dying in masses everyday behind the frontline of Bakhmut thanks to the loving arms of Mother Russia.
So F ck your peace.
And I’m sure you’re heart just bleeds for those poor Russian boys being mowed down in human wave assaults… How many now, 200,000?… A million?
You can’t f’n count!
This is why we have to let it play out till such time as both sides can come to accept the same truth.
Or until there is no longer a “both sides”.
Absent nuclear immolation, that seems unlikely. There are 140-odd-million Russians, and they’re more likely to put a stop to what their government is doing than to feed all 140-odd-million of themselves to its failed project.
I think it extremely likely that Russia will vanquish it’s Ukrainian adversary and it should go over very well with the Russian people as it will with most people of the World. That is the probable resolution of the “both sides” dilemma – not whatever you’re yammering about.
Fourteen months of failure to take even the minimal required objectives for declaring “victory” before pulling the Russian teat out of the wringer Putin stuck it in suggests it’s unlikely that there will be any “vanquishing” involved.
You can’t call it “failure” yet. There was no time limit put on anything.
I can call it anything I damn well please.
The “partial mobilization” conclusively established that the Russian regime considered it a “failure” up to at least that point. The absence of significant progress since then tells the remainder of the story so far.
You can call it anything you want, that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. If Russia’s goals are accomplished, whether it takes two weeks or two years, it will be a success for them. If you’re of the opinion that it’s a failure thus far, fine, but that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually meet their goals. Will it still be a failure if that happens?
No, it won’t be a failure if it happens.
But the goal AS ANNOUNCED — regime change in Ukraine — seems vanishingly unlikely to happen.
The best realistic outcome is that the Russian forces can secure the LPR/DPR, and possibly a land corridor connecting them to Crimea, and use that to smear a bunch of “victory” lipstick on the pig.
True. That was a stated goal. As was de-militarization. Both pipe dreams.
Putin’s announced goals were demilitarization, denazification, and “liberation” of the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-war-vanishing-goals#:~:text=Putin's%20Evolving%20Objectives&text=So%2C%20before%20the%20start%20of,of%20Luhansk%20and%20Donetsk%20oblasts.
“We will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” — Vladimir Putin, 02/24/22
Putin said he would demilitarize Ukraine. He’s been doing that steadily. Those who think that lack of progress in gaining territory implies “failure” have great difficulty accepting the fact that Russia is steadily eroding Ukraine’s troops, armor, and ammunition.
That all depends on how you measure success, by square area of land – or by the height of the pile of dead Ukrainians.
And the teat is entirely our own.
The only comment you — or anyone else — has ever seen me make on the “heights of piles of dead bodies” since the invasion is that I see no reason to blindly trust either regime’s claims about how few of their own are dead and how many of the other side’s are dead.
Military success is measured by the ability to achieve, or not achieve, the objectives of the war effort.
And after 14 months, the Russian forces haven’t even achieved the minimal plausible (for purposes of declaring “victory”) objective of securing the Donbas region, let alone the initial stated goal of regime change (“de-militarization and de-Nazification”).
(“de-militarization and de-Nazification”)
The mills of the Gods grind slowly but exceedingly fine.
Well, they grind exceedingly fine, but as I pointed out, we have no way of really knowing just how fast they’ve ground up Russians and Ukrainians respectively so far.
Even if they were losing an equal number since the start of the Special Military Operation, Russia has a million man army, at best Ukraine has half that including reserves.
No matter how you roll the dice, the outcome favors Russia.
But war isn’t rolling dice. It’s achieving objectives. Which the Russians haven’t proven themselves very good at doing so far.
They were just kidding with that second professed goal. Nations bleat disinformation all the time.
330 million Americans can not can not redeem their nation from a handful of Zionist thugs who run their country like a slave yard.140 million Russians run their own destiny, not fifth columnists
With all the Ukrainian success, not many Russians are left with enough fingers to count on their own hands. Even Ukraine is having trouble counting all the dead Russians. It’s too much. Let’s send another $100 billion to the Ukrainians to buy them new calculators. Of course, we have to pay 10% to big guy number 1, 10% to big guy number 2, etc. Wait… oh, dear. I’m running out of my own fingers. I should have kept my thumbs when I worked at the chop shop. (Sarcasm alert)
Only those that accept Washington’s lies accept their claims to know Russia’s casulty rate.
But it sure is curious they know Russia’s but somehow are unable to determine the side they supply with arms, just how many on the Ukranian side are dying.
So we just give them stuff without determining how effective it is? We have no idea if any of that stuff is keeping troops alive or not?
Liars lie but this is crazy.
I just hope that when the liars are confronted, the American public will try to hold them accountable.
If the media fails to censor properly the American public will do it with their votes.
But the media will do their best to not let us make informed votes.
Most of Ukraine attacks (artillery, mortar, missiles, drones, air force, others) are observed and recorded. I have watched thousands of those videos on Youtube showing thousands of Russians troops being killed or disabled in the last 14 months of the war.
I believe these figures cause I have seen the evidence plus folks like Prigozhin and Igor Girkin have come very close to agree with those figures as well.
The Russian army on the other hand, have not provided any evidence of the half million Ukrainian deaths.
“I have watched thousands of those videos on Youtube showing thousands of Russians troops being killed or disabled in the last 14 months of the war.”
There are also “thousands” of videos online (e.g., on Telegram) showing Ukrainian soldier deaths and corpses.
Thousands of you tubes “manufactured” in Israel
“Thousands”? The war is less than 500 days old. That’s a lot of video watching. Call me a bit on the skeptical side.
That’s cause there are thousands of attacks and all have been recorded. Not my fault if you haven’t watched them but they are out there in open source.
I was questioning the time it takes to watch “thousands” of videos in 14 months. Not whether those videos exist.
Youtube and telegram everyday since the war started. Check out Kanal13 channel on youtube, they post multiple videos daily. Very graphic, I warn.
I’ll pass.
They are 1-2 minutes long.
Every single “fact” about the Ukraine War that comes from the White House has been a blatant lie. They know it. They cynically lie anyway, in pure propaganda on the Nazi model of Joseph Goebbels.
If challenged, they think “Noble Lie,” then deny that in another lie.
The coming counteroffensive may be so severe for Ukraine that it will be impossible to deny the truth.
The only group that gives accurate figures is the DPR. They put out a list with the individual names honoring their dead and wounded. They have had heavy losses for sure, last I saw they have reported almost 5,000 KIA. Keep in mind though, they lost more than that during the civil war and they are frontline guys who fought with light weapons and played a large roll in Mariupol.They lost more men and were driven back to the border with Russia, now they lost the same or less and are part of the Russian federation and have regained much of their lost territory. For them, these high numbers are probably worth it. It’s been their territory under attack since 2014. It’s their family and friends who lived in fear of artillery strikes, not the people in Kiev, not unless they enlisted to go hunt Orcs that is.
I find it interesting that the numbers put out by Ukraine seem to fit their own losses better than Russia’s or at least as well I should say. Are they simply taking their own numbers and claiming they are the Russian numbers? I swear that each time these figures come out it reads that way to me. Like they say to themselves, “Well we know we have lost XYX so we will just assume that Russia has lost XYX as well”.
It’s easier to know you own losses, so why not make the assumption that Russian losses are similar, if you believe you are giving as good as you get, it almost makes sense. And even if you know your losses are higher, you aren’t going to advertise it anyway.
” Information war ” is there we all can see that.
We might know all the casualties after the war is finished,just like the previous wars,until then,we believe whatever we choose to believe.
I wouldn’t take Russian estimate figures either for internal purposes only. But considering the superiority of firepower Russia has, it is highly unlikely the number dropped off by US is real.