To be honest I’m not really reading any analysis here. It reads like more of a synopsis of press articles that you can read on a daily basis in the Guardian, Telegraph or FT (if you are British) or the NY Times or Washington Post (if American). It seems to me that the western press - and hence your post - is high on its own supply.
It would be far more valuable if you sought out and included non-western/Ukrainian sources, critiqued these also, and came to your own conclusions (with justifications of course) as to what the true state of affairs is.
It is true that I do read the mainstream media. They have some intelligent and grounded analysis. But I also spend a significant amount of time in Ukraine and look at Ukrainian media. What other outlets do you suggest?
Thank you for your response. One always hesitates to comment upon anything to do with the war in Ukraine since for very good reasons passions run high on both sides.
I would recommend the following (all in English, I have almost zero knowledge of Russian).
On Substack I would highly recommend Simplicius The Thinker. He publishes 2-3 articles a week most of which are free to read. http://simplicius76.substack.com. He is consistently 2-3 months ahead of the western press in terms of the trajectory of the conflict. He is clearly strongly pro Russian but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
On YouTube I recommend Brian Berletic’s “The New Atlas”. This channel is anti US in general and deals with US/European relationships with many countries; primarily China but also occasionally Russia. He is clear, articulate and concise. He has a clear anti western agenda, but once again that doesn’t necessarily make him wrongly.
On Telegram there is a channel called The Duran which is run by two Greek guys, both of whom are called Alexander. https://t.me/thedurancom. Both publish a daily video. A. Christophorou is a little juvenile and A. Mercuris is very long winded so I hesitate a little to recommend them on that account. However they will often talk to each other on the major theme of the day and this is invariably worth listening to (since Christophorou becomes less juvenile and Mercuris becomes more concise). Every couple of days Mercuris will also interview some major figure, e.g. John Mearsheimer or Jeffrey Sachs, and these are definitely worth listening to.
It’s always useful to know what the enemy is thinking!
"Last week Trump seemed far more engaged with the collision of a military helicopter and an airline (sic) in DC than in either the Ukraine war or the crisis in the Middle East." If I was a US citizen I would want my President to be more focused on events at home effecting US citizens. That JS thinks Trump should focus on foreign wars betrays his true viewpoint - the US should be the world's global hegemon, out kicking ass around the world.
I agree that as the US accepts multipolarity, it will sweat its vassals harder, which will likely be uncomfortable for Europeans and Latin Americans. But they shouldn’t have been such craven tools of the neocons in the first place - particularly the Europeans. However, your comment about the crash clearly implies Trump should focus more on Ukraine and Israel and not on a home tragedy affecting (sic touché 👏😂) his actual voters. Not sure how these two points are connected.
"If I was a US citizen I would want my President to be more focused on events at home effecting (sic) US citizens." The problem is not that the US is withdrawing - that is its right. The problem is that it is turning predatory. Threatening to take over Greenland, Panama (or even Canada) is not withdrawing. Nor is demanding $500bn dollars from a war-torn Ukraine.
“in. Or maybe Europe stops shilly-shallying and gets serious”
there was a good amount of talk about Trump and this is line provides good insight that could be expanded on more to discuss why Europe is not getting more serious about this
Because European economies are all financialised and are no longer capable of manufacturing anything on scale or of sufficient quality or even cost effectively. This is especially true of war materiel. If The EU and UK tried to have a war with Russia they would be annihilated in short order. Russian forbearance of the pathetic posturing and provocations from these pathetic countries and their crappy armies has likely saved the world from nuclear destruction.
One thing that is repeatedly glossed over is that Ukraine has shown zero ability to penetrate entrenched Russian defenses, and they’ve taken heavy casualties every single time they’ve attempted to.
The Kursk offensive was against very lightly defended farmland with no dug in defenses or artillery support. As you already mentioned, they’re holding half of what they initially took and it requires their best mechanized units to do so.
Ukrainians are also struggling to mount sticky counterattacks in areas the Russians have captured but not consolidated, where they retake territory and actually hold it for longer than a day or two.
You’ll hear about Russia running out of vehicles, but the paucity of strong mechanized counterattacks even in Kursk is an indicator that the Ukrainian armored assault vehicle situation is not good either.
I’ve seen posts mocking Russians for using a hodgepodge of civilian cars and vans for front line logistics, but then the Russians started posting videos of hitting the Ukrainian logistics on the road to Sudzha, and the Ukrainians are also reduced to using minivans and econobox cars for logistics. Same situation in the Kurakhove pocket and elsewhere.
People should stop emphasizing Russian casualties if they don’t want to talk about realistic estimates of Ukrainian casualties.
Yes, Russian assault forces taking a hardened position are going to take heavier casualties. Ukrainians moving to and from fighting positions are also taking casualties, particularly when withdrawing from or reinforcing the frequently forming cauldrons once the Russians have narrowed the ingress and egress routes to 1-2 roads.
Rear areas 1-2km from the front line aren’t safe. Artillery spotter drones can easily penetrate much further than that. Once the Ukrainians are in their bunkers they’re hard to hurt with anything less than glide bombs, but moving to and from those positions is incredibly dangerous.
The truth is we don't know how much each side is losing. Both sides' figures are classified. The estimates we have are from western intelligence, which I know might be skewed. The BBC project is admirable but they talk about confirmed losses which comes from looking at graveyards, Facebook posts etc... They say themselves that the real number is many times that. The 1,000/day figure is also for total casualties. Some of those will also be returning to the battlefield. So I accept that any numbers I or anyone else gives are very rough estimates. Perhaps I should have made that clear. The notion that Ukrainian losses are far higher than Russian losses is almost certainly false. Anyone who has spent time on the frontline Ukraine will realise just how hard and costly it is to attack across open ground. Urban warfare is even worse for the attackers. Furthermore the Ukrainians have a significant amount of western technology and weaponry. If I had to guess - and it is a guess - based on what I have seen on the frontline, and the estimates of others I respect, I would say there are probably three or four Russian casualties for every Ukrainian casualty.
" If I had to guess - and it is a guess - based on what I have seen on the frontline, and the estimates of others I respect, I would say there are probably three or four Russian casualties for every Ukrainian casualty."
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Oddly enough, 4:1 is nearly exactly the ratio of casualties for the whole war so far, according to the most credible estimates I have seen. However, you have the ratio REVERSED. The various other analysis hover around 1 Russian (permanent) casualty for every 4 or so Ukrainian. You DID mention your training was to make your superiors look good?
You may want to research the numbers of prosthetic limbs being ordered and graves dug across Ukraine (check satellite imagery of graveyard expansion too), the numbers are shocking, especially considering a large % of Ukraine's KIA are kept off their books, unacknowledged to their families in order to avoid paying benefits and with their bodies left left behind as the Ukrainians have been in a constant slow retreat nearly everywhere for quite some time.
Hard to buy the line that Russia is losing 3-4 times Ukraine causalities when all accounts are that artillery is the main cause of causalities. Russia clearly outguns. Not to mention the fab glidebombs that Russia are fielding in the hundreds and thousands.
Ukraine has no defence from those and no counter weapon equivalent.
Ukrainian losses are a multiple of Russian- artillery is the biggest killer and the side with the least outgoing artillery and most incoming hits is Ukraine by an order of magnitude.
BBC (https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng-trl, scroll down to get chart of "Confirmed Russian losses in Ukraine per month") indicates about 1000 Russian deaths in Dec 2024 (per month not per day, in other words). But this is probably only half the actual deaths, because data on confirmed deaths trickles in slowly. So real number of deaths probably 75/day. Permanent injuries probably another 75/day, at least, so rate of total losses about 150-200/day currently.
Enlightening… Possibly Trump’s relative silence on Ukraine after all the belly-aching from the American right about the cost of helping it fight indicates lobbying by US weapons and military technology industries is getting traction - and with a Gaza ceasefire, they’ve lost a lot of their market.
I am perplexed why we hear little evidence of the use of stormshadow, scalp, the F16s or the mirages. Surely, they could change the picture considerably. Indeed, even the tanks. Are they totally useless because of drones?
I'm not really a military expert but my sense is that all these weapons are useful when deployed at scale, but there are just not enough of them. Also many tanks, for example, come into their own during manoeuvre warfare. But in trench warfare they are really little more than big guns. And everything now seems susceptible to drones. I think one of the problems is that we have been looking for one game-changer, silver bullet or stroke of tactical genius, whereas in fact everything has to work a little better to have an effect. It is the cumulative that really count. That's my layman's understanding anyway.
Exactly. Lots of people say they would sign up if it was more predictable and less lethal and it was for a fixed term. But of course those are big asks at a time when the country is fighting for its existence...
No, Ukraine is fighting to become a western client state and hostile NATO outpost on the border with Russia - a formidably martial nation. The option of living peacefully with Russia was what the people massively voted Zelensky in for in 2019, but western powers prevented this option preferring to sacrifice maybe 1 million young and old men to "bleed" Russia. A shameful and immoral policy that is bankrupting the the EU and UK.
To be honest I’m not really reading any analysis here. It reads like more of a synopsis of press articles that you can read on a daily basis in the Guardian, Telegraph or FT (if you are British) or the NY Times or Washington Post (if American). It seems to me that the western press - and hence your post - is high on its own supply.
It would be far more valuable if you sought out and included non-western/Ukrainian sources, critiqued these also, and came to your own conclusions (with justifications of course) as to what the true state of affairs is.
It is true that I do read the mainstream media. They have some intelligent and grounded analysis. But I also spend a significant amount of time in Ukraine and look at Ukrainian media. What other outlets do you suggest?
Thank you for your response. One always hesitates to comment upon anything to do with the war in Ukraine since for very good reasons passions run high on both sides.
I would recommend the following (all in English, I have almost zero knowledge of Russian).
On Substack I would highly recommend Simplicius The Thinker. He publishes 2-3 articles a week most of which are free to read. http://simplicius76.substack.com. He is consistently 2-3 months ahead of the western press in terms of the trajectory of the conflict. He is clearly strongly pro Russian but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.
On YouTube I recommend Brian Berletic’s “The New Atlas”. This channel is anti US in general and deals with US/European relationships with many countries; primarily China but also occasionally Russia. He is clear, articulate and concise. He has a clear anti western agenda, but once again that doesn’t necessarily make him wrongly.
On Telegram there is a channel called The Duran which is run by two Greek guys, both of whom are called Alexander. https://t.me/thedurancom. Both publish a daily video. A. Christophorou is a little juvenile and A. Mercuris is very long winded so I hesitate a little to recommend them on that account. However they will often talk to each other on the major theme of the day and this is invariably worth listening to (since Christophorou becomes less juvenile and Mercuris becomes more concise). Every couple of days Mercuris will also interview some major figure, e.g. John Mearsheimer or Jeffrey Sachs, and these are definitely worth listening to.
It’s always useful to know what the enemy is thinking!
"Last week Trump seemed far more engaged with the collision of a military helicopter and an airline (sic) in DC than in either the Ukraine war or the crisis in the Middle East." If I was a US citizen I would want my President to be more focused on events at home effecting US citizens. That JS thinks Trump should focus on foreign wars betrays his true viewpoint - the US should be the world's global hegemon, out kicking ass around the world.
I agree that as the US accepts multipolarity, it will sweat its vassals harder, which will likely be uncomfortable for Europeans and Latin Americans. But they shouldn’t have been such craven tools of the neocons in the first place - particularly the Europeans. However, your comment about the crash clearly implies Trump should focus more on Ukraine and Israel and not on a home tragedy affecting (sic touché 👏😂) his actual voters. Not sure how these two points are connected.
"If I was a US citizen I would want my President to be more focused on events at home effecting (sic) US citizens." The problem is not that the US is withdrawing - that is its right. The problem is that it is turning predatory. Threatening to take over Greenland, Panama (or even Canada) is not withdrawing. Nor is demanding $500bn dollars from a war-torn Ukraine.
“in. Or maybe Europe stops shilly-shallying and gets serious”
there was a good amount of talk about Trump and this is line provides good insight that could be expanded on more to discuss why Europe is not getting more serious about this
Because European economies are all financialised and are no longer capable of manufacturing anything on scale or of sufficient quality or even cost effectively. This is especially true of war materiel. If The EU and UK tried to have a war with Russia they would be annihilated in short order. Russian forbearance of the pathetic posturing and provocations from these pathetic countries and their crappy armies has likely saved the world from nuclear destruction.
One thing that is repeatedly glossed over is that Ukraine has shown zero ability to penetrate entrenched Russian defenses, and they’ve taken heavy casualties every single time they’ve attempted to.
The Kursk offensive was against very lightly defended farmland with no dug in defenses or artillery support. As you already mentioned, they’re holding half of what they initially took and it requires their best mechanized units to do so.
Ukrainians are also struggling to mount sticky counterattacks in areas the Russians have captured but not consolidated, where they retake territory and actually hold it for longer than a day or two.
You’ll hear about Russia running out of vehicles, but the paucity of strong mechanized counterattacks even in Kursk is an indicator that the Ukrainian armored assault vehicle situation is not good either.
I’ve seen posts mocking Russians for using a hodgepodge of civilian cars and vans for front line logistics, but then the Russians started posting videos of hitting the Ukrainian logistics on the road to Sudzha, and the Ukrainians are also reduced to using minivans and econobox cars for logistics. Same situation in the Kurakhove pocket and elsewhere.
People should stop emphasizing Russian casualties if they don’t want to talk about realistic estimates of Ukrainian casualties.
Yes, Russian assault forces taking a hardened position are going to take heavier casualties. Ukrainians moving to and from fighting positions are also taking casualties, particularly when withdrawing from or reinforcing the frequently forming cauldrons once the Russians have narrowed the ingress and egress routes to 1-2 roads.
Rear areas 1-2km from the front line aren’t safe. Artillery spotter drones can easily penetrate much further than that. Once the Ukrainians are in their bunkers they’re hard to hurt with anything less than glide bombs, but moving to and from those positions is incredibly dangerous.
I don’t think you know your history from reading this article, and there are 2 sides to every story whereas you’ve ignored 1/2 the story.
https://mankind.substack.com/p/quick-take-a-military-history-of?r=17hbre&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Russians are simply not losing 1000 men per day. This undermines the rest of this piece. Where does this figure come from ..the BBC?
The truth is we don't know how much each side is losing. Both sides' figures are classified. The estimates we have are from western intelligence, which I know might be skewed. The BBC project is admirable but they talk about confirmed losses which comes from looking at graveyards, Facebook posts etc... They say themselves that the real number is many times that. The 1,000/day figure is also for total casualties. Some of those will also be returning to the battlefield. So I accept that any numbers I or anyone else gives are very rough estimates. Perhaps I should have made that clear. The notion that Ukrainian losses are far higher than Russian losses is almost certainly false. Anyone who has spent time on the frontline Ukraine will realise just how hard and costly it is to attack across open ground. Urban warfare is even worse for the attackers. Furthermore the Ukrainians have a significant amount of western technology and weaponry. If I had to guess - and it is a guess - based on what I have seen on the frontline, and the estimates of others I respect, I would say there are probably three or four Russian casualties for every Ukrainian casualty.
@Julius Strauss
(Quote)
" If I had to guess - and it is a guess - based on what I have seen on the frontline, and the estimates of others I respect, I would say there are probably three or four Russian casualties for every Ukrainian casualty."
----------
Oddly enough, 4:1 is nearly exactly the ratio of casualties for the whole war so far, according to the most credible estimates I have seen. However, you have the ratio REVERSED. The various other analysis hover around 1 Russian (permanent) casualty for every 4 or so Ukrainian. You DID mention your training was to make your superiors look good?
You may want to research the numbers of prosthetic limbs being ordered and graves dug across Ukraine (check satellite imagery of graveyard expansion too), the numbers are shocking, especially considering a large % of Ukraine's KIA are kept off their books, unacknowledged to their families in order to avoid paying benefits and with their bodies left left behind as the Ukrainians have been in a constant slow retreat nearly everywhere for quite some time.
How come every exchange of bodies and prisoners is 8 to 10 Ukrainians for each Russian? Don't these figures reflect relative casualty rates?
Hard to buy the line that Russia is losing 3-4 times Ukraine causalities when all accounts are that artillery is the main cause of causalities. Russia clearly outguns. Not to mention the fab glidebombs that Russia are fielding in the hundreds and thousands.
Ukraine has no defence from those and no counter weapon equivalent.
That’s more realistic. Ukraine seems to be about 7-8 times this. That’s quite a lot.
Ukrainian losses are a multiple of Russian- artillery is the biggest killer and the side with the least outgoing artillery and most incoming hits is Ukraine by an order of magnitude.
BBC (https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng-trl, scroll down to get chart of "Confirmed Russian losses in Ukraine per month") indicates about 1000 Russian deaths in Dec 2024 (per month not per day, in other words). But this is probably only half the actual deaths, because data on confirmed deaths trickles in slowly. So real number of deaths probably 75/day. Permanent injuries probably another 75/day, at least, so rate of total losses about 150-200/day currently.
Ukraine can’t win this war. They can’t even take back Crimea.
Thanks for this! It reinforces what I had thought. Unfortunately! But a very helpful and frank analysis.
Excellent post and overview, albeit not good news for Ukraine or for Europe.
It seems to me that Ukraine cannot win unless Europe gets involved. Macron may be in decline, but he has been supporting such a move. Perhaps alone?
Whilst I would hate for there to be an European war, the alternatives to getting involved on our own terms may be much worse.
Enlightening… Possibly Trump’s relative silence on Ukraine after all the belly-aching from the American right about the cost of helping it fight indicates lobbying by US weapons and military technology industries is getting traction - and with a Gaza ceasefire, they’ve lost a lot of their market.
Ugh, I take it back
I am perplexed why we hear little evidence of the use of stormshadow, scalp, the F16s or the mirages. Surely, they could change the picture considerably. Indeed, even the tanks. Are they totally useless because of drones?
I'm not really a military expert but my sense is that all these weapons are useful when deployed at scale, but there are just not enough of them. Also many tanks, for example, come into their own during manoeuvre warfare. But in trench warfare they are really little more than big guns. And everything now seems susceptible to drones. I think one of the problems is that we have been looking for one game-changer, silver bullet or stroke of tactical genius, whereas in fact everything has to work a little better to have an effect. It is the cumulative that really count. That's my layman's understanding anyway.
A steady stream of events like the one involving the scooter and Kirillov are needed in the background......
Bit like Britain after three years of the First World War
The warrior types have already joined up and those who are left dont want to go
A Kyiv taxi driver (yes, I know) told me anyone going to the front is crazy. His friends send messages saying don’t come, it’s lethal
Exactly. Lots of people say they would sign up if it was more predictable and less lethal and it was for a fixed term. But of course those are big asks at a time when the country is fighting for its existence...
No, Ukraine is fighting to become a western client state and hostile NATO outpost on the border with Russia - a formidably martial nation. The option of living peacefully with Russia was what the people massively voted Zelensky in for in 2019, but western powers prevented this option preferring to sacrifice maybe 1 million young and old men to "bleed" Russia. A shameful and immoral policy that is bankrupting the the EU and UK.