Because war is so destructive, it’s often difficult to make accurate totals of all the causalities. Last I heard, the total on the Ukraine side is state secret that Ukraine doesn’t want anyone to know. But when a larger more populous country attacks a smaller nation we can make an easy guess which side will see greater casualties.
Demographics fascinate me, and I don’t know offhand the breakdown of the population by age bracket in Ukraine, but if memory serves in the USA about 20% are elderly, 20% are mid 20s or younger and the rest are middle aged. Men and women breakdown roughly 50/50. When Ukraine got their independence the country had 50 million people. Before the war it was down to 38 million, and UN reports after the invasion said Ukraine lost 8 million, most of whom fled the country for other parts of Europe.
This would make the remaining population around 30 million, only 15 million being men. If the age breakdown is similar then only 3 million men are available who are of fighting age. And if Russia’s estimates is accurate that a million of them have been killed then Ukraine has lost 1/3rd of everyone left who can fight.
But it could be worse than that, it’s not uncommon for 40-50 year old Ukrainian men to die in battle. I’ve even seen them enlist Ukrainian men with Down’s Syndrome.
Russia has paid a heavy toll as well. I’ve seen videos of Moscow where you see people walking the street and there’s almost no men at all to be found.
Regardless, if the casualty numbers are correct then that fantastic bargain that Nicky has been so gleeful about for two years means that it’s cost 10 Ukrainians for every Russian killed. Trying to keep this going is a little worse than “stabbing Ukraine in the back”, it’s enabling a genocide of an entire country as just the cost of business for your stupid political desires.
First of all, do better research. A quick check shows Ukraine's population is nearly 38 million, which is about 8 million greater than Wanker thought.
Second, Wanker is completely WRONG in basic his analysis of casualty rates on the size of the country. For example in WWII the Soviet Union had BY FAR the largest population of any European country and ALSO had the highest casualty rate. Most important, the casualty rate is ALWAYS higher for the country which is on offense, regardless of population size. That's Russia. Ukraine, precisely because of its smaller population has been on defense except during its failed 2023 offensive.
Russia also uses the primitive "meat wave" tactic which throws human waves of soldiers at a dug-in enemy causing extremely high casualties compared to the defenders. This was made worse by Russia's heavy losses of tanks and other armored fighting vehicles. They are now using motorcycles and other confiscated civilian vehicles. Their original formations of well-trained soldiers have been chewed up and their new units are made up of lightly-trained conscripts who don't know how to survive in combat.
If you search for casualty rates on google you get a glut of numbers that are all over the place so I'm not going to cherry pick. But NONE of them show Russia with fewer casualties, by far.
And now watch Loser-The-Fake-Marine claim I can't possibly know what I'm talking about since I didn't serve in the armed forces. Trouble is, I'm 100% RIGHT.
Their heaviest losses I believe happened during the German invasion.
Counting the losses is both imprecise, and of course there’s political motivations from many parties to over state and under state the total numbers. So who knows.
I figure the leaked US intelligence number of 100,000 Russians killed in the fighting is probably a good estimate since the number wasn’t intended for public consumption.
Russia’s own estimate of a million Ukrainians killed is likely overstated because it’s in their interest to do so. American estimates will likely understate it. I also doubt there’s anyone sifting through the rubble and going, “1, 2, 3…”
In such cases it’s best probably to get a range of casualties from everyone’s estimates, average them together while eliminating obvious outliers like gross over and under estimates.
Whatever the number, Russia has 4x the population, so I don’t see Ukraine being able to continue fighting. Russia will take all of Ukraine once Ukraine runs out of men.
Might I recommend a series of five books by the English military officer Prit Buttar (an Indian name but he's Brit born). It's quite authoritative and marks the first Soviet offensive as beginning in Dec. 1941, only six months after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the USSR). After that, the Russians were pretty much on the offensive through April 1945.
Please try not "doing a CDL on us," in other words opining on things you know nothing about but in an authoritative manner.
Your method of averaging out a realistic casualty number is ham-handed as hell. Which is why I refused to do it. Most people will say that Russia has lost a huge number of men but has the capacity to do so. Will they run out of men before Ukraine runs out of the will to fight? That's the question. But Russia's ability to wage war has been de-fanged for many years. Especially including their equipment losses. They're using donkeys to move supplies to the front, for shit's sake.
And that's not to mention their loss of educated men who fled rather than serve. More than 1 million.
This will injure their ability to create and manufacture things well into the future. Hell, they never really recovered from WWII.
Russia will "take" Ukraine when we and our allies abandon it. Our allies, being the ones bordering the rapacious Putin, will not cut and run. We very well might.
…if we assume the estimates were based upon anything empirical. Many of them are likely not to be anything but made up numbers, but the approach I talked about is how it might be done in a research paper. It has it’s limitations, but such is life. Or if you’re Chinchilla, such is your penis.
