Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre
If correct, and I mean if, that is a colossal number.
That’s around 50% total of the British army, and just shy of 35% of estimated number of soldiers in this offensive.
Seems high to me from my armchair.
Losses that high after 3 weeks are totally unsustainable, at that rate the whole Russian offensive could be neutralised in a further 6 weeks.
Which makes me think it’s quite an over estimate….
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And this is precisely the problem with so much of the media commentary we are presently surrounded with. There is a received wisdom that Putin’s a strategic grand master and the Russian military is vast and fearsome. It has been extremely difficult for us to believe the evidence of our eyes in the face of this.
The reality is that the Russians have been halted almost everywhere; northwest of Kyiv a significant number of them are now surrounded by Ukrainian troops, and everywhere else they are critically low on supplies. Even in the southeast, they’re hardly winning a military victory at Mariupol. They’re simply erasing it from the map.
NATO’s latest casualty estimate is based on careful research, including signals intelligence, which means to some extent the information is coming from the Russians themselves, albeit involuntarily. They’re not simply taking as gospel whatever they hear from the Ukrainian government. If you haven’t checked out Phillips O’Brien or Mike Martin on Twatter yet, you really should. Their calm, academic analysis is based on research and experience, not a predetermined editorial line (or, indeed, a reluctance to admit they may have grossly overestimated the effectiveness of the Russian military prior to this conflict).