” …mobilized Russian troops who “arrived in the area to perform combat missions did not undergo appropriate training and lack practical skills in the use of basic types of weapons. This leads to significant losses of enemy manpower.”
Newsweek was not able to independently verify Ukraine’s report and reached out to Russia’s Defense Ministry for confirmation and comment.
If true, the losses due to insufficient training could further degrade Russian President Vladimir Putin’s manpower. The latest estimate from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said that more than 69,000 Russian troops have been killed since the war began on February 24. Similarly, a U.S. Defense Department release in late August said that U.S. officials believe Russia had lost between 60,000 and 80,000 soldiers.
Comment: 60k to 80k? This is not war. This is a “butchery.” The Wagner mercenary group fighting near Bakhmut has experienced similar losses. How Shoigu and Gerasimov think they can keep throwing untrained and inexperienced men at the well-equipped Ukrainians who are “riding a wave” of victory is a mystery to me. Maybe BG (ret) Don Bolduc can take some time after he wins in NH to go explain to the Russians how this all works. pl
Russian Losses Fueled by New Units Untrained in ‘Basic’ Weaponry: Ukraine (msn.com)
Would most of these Russian soldiers have been killed in artillery strikes? I’m curious on a comparative basis how many Ukrainians KIA?
The mobilization of these Russians without proper training or equipment who are psychologically inexperienced with the horrors of direct combat is a tragedy for their families.
In retrospect how could have Putin misjudged the “special military operation”? It can’t just be that he was fed bullshit and that the intelligence of Ukrainian military capabilities was faulty or the resolve of the Eastern Europeans and the west to militarily support the Ukrainian army with arms & battlefield intelligence was not judged correctly ? Did the unopposed annexation of Crimea provide a false illusory blueprint?
Most ground soldiers who are KIA are killed by artillery or mortars.
Putin ran an unsuccessful bluff. He banked on Western leaders being soft. Western leaders are soft but the Ukrainians are not.
Sam,
The West only let out a few tut-tuts and a half hearted harumph when Putin took and annexed Crimea. I’m sure that figured into his assessment of the West’s reaction to his February invasion. I think he was absolutely shocked by both the Ukrainian and Western resistance. I think the presence of an old, old cold warrior like Biden was instrumental in forming the Western resistance. The Ukrainian resistance was all a product of the Ukrainians and their leader, Zelenskiy.
TTG
Yeah, the lack of response to the Crimea military annexation was likely construed by Putin that the west and NATO in particular are a paper tiger. Of course Trump even admired Putin’s actions then. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began he said Putin was “genius” and “savvy”.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/23/trump-putin-ukraine-invasion-00010923
I’m not sure what role the folks who run the Biden administration played but what was interesting was how quickly the Germans and French who have typically opposed any type of direct western intervention coalesced with the Eastern Europeans to provide a vigorous opposition to the invasion. What is further interesting is the newly elected “right-wing” Meloni government in Italy is also in full support of Ukrainian resistance. This in any case has been a huge miscalculation by Putin as he didn’t foresee the European opposition.
Why do you think the Scholz Social Democrat + Green coalition government in Germany reacted so strongly? That IMO was pivotal.
Sam,
I don’t know what caused Scholz to react so strongly. His immediate shut down of Nord Stream 2, even though it was not yet in operation, was a massively important psychological signal to Europe and a blow to Putin. I’m sure Biden wore him down with endless stories from an old man about the good old days of NATO and the bad old days of the WTO. Amy Gutman, Biden’s new ambassador to Germany, most likely played an important part.
I wonder if Meloni sees support for Ukraine as an easy way to score points with the Italian electorate while simultaneously squashing Berlusconi, who I suspect she sees as competition.
(This does not mean she isn’t still pretty much a right wing nut, though…)
I’m glad you see through the PR bllship and recognize Meloni as a right wing nut. Was it her unapologetic love of Italy first that did it? Mayhaps her insistence on Italy for Italians. I thought the dead give away was her proudly announced love of Catholicism (I am agnostic BTW), family, and law and order. When you get a politician who champions those things watch out … right wing nut alarm!
https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/14-days/bakhmut_ukraine_713174
Weather good.this is it.make or break
The key point is –
“Newsweek was not able to independently verify Ukraine’s report and reached out to Russia’s Defense Ministry for confirmation and comment.”
This is a propaganda war and both sides are telling porky’s and hiding the truth.
Peter Williams,
What surprised me more was the Pentagon’s estimate of Russian losses between 60,000 to 80,000. I’d expect a Ukrainian exaggeration, but our estimate is in line with theirs.
Averages are well, average. But since March the Russians have lost 10,000 guys/month. There is a fight for Kherson coming soon and I (a complete neophyte) predict the UKM will then take action along the south eastern shore of the Dnieper. If successful there, Crimea will be the prize for January-February 2023. Russia will have spent a year attempting to subdue the untermensch to their west.
By year’s end Russia will have lost around 100,000 men during w/Crimea promising more. What could be worth so many lives? I have been saying the same thing since March. The answer is empire. If Russia cannot subdue the “l’ill Russians” living under the south west armpit of Russia than the empire is over. This is the EXISTENTIAL issue; not Russia. Russia will go on, but the empire won’t. This has always and only been about Putin’s rtn to 1914. “Mother Russia” is being ill advised.
And where does the Pentagon get their figures? From the Ukrainians, so it’s no wonder that their figures agree.
Most of the real info about this war is crowd sourced and it takes a little while to be confirmed, but the trend is rather clear that Russia is in a world of hurt on the battlefield and this will increasingly be felt domestically. The main difference between now and the past is all the uploaded videos that show a lot of snap shots, but put together show a larger picture. This is one reason why traditional propaganda is not nearly as effective as it once was.
Putin recently talked about “two Wests” and he is counting on getting help from the right wing universe and he is. The main problem with that is that he is showing the rest of the world what kind of government they should expect, should the right wing parties prevail and I expect that to be increasingly evident. So, he is not helping his friends in the West a whole lot and it could get even worse.
The supposed American right wing doesn’t realize that they are being taken for the ride, same as the supposed left wing. Woke is the Koolaid for the left, this rather still-birth Christian Nationalism is the Koolaid for the right. Both sides are being played against those caught in the middle, the just plain folks. I don’t hate the Russian, I hate the Soviet. I don’t hate the Chinese, I hate the CCP. And I don’t hate myself, I hate the Davos/UN Agenda.
Lars
Putin’s personal penchant for irredentism is very disappointing to those of us who generally admired his leadership of Russia before February 24th. It is all the more frustrating when he continues to gives speeches like the recent one to the Valdai Club (well worth reading in its totality IMO). The man remains a master statesman, but his critical flaw re the Little Russians undermines all of that.
My personal hope is that the next president of the RF is just as conservative in outlook* and even nationalistic, but strictly within Russia’s borders. This mirror’s my position on the ideal next president for the US btw. I do not subscribe to the ‘regime change’ camp’s view that Russia will necessarily be better off with a Western friendly leader (read neoliberal) who would likely be instructed to try and outdo the pillaging of the 1990’s.
*Putin’s speeches on fighting woke Shigalovian cancel culture (he quotes this character from Dostoevsky’s Demons) which wants to enslave 9/10 of humanity in a post cultural hellscape are great, but from what I read the WEF’s Demonic program is well advanced in Russia. The disparity between the rhetoric and the realities of Russian civil society seem to be as wide as the disparity between state propaganda and the realities of Russia’s military.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69695
Barbara Ann –
“woke Shigalovian”? It must be a half a century since I read Dostoevsky. But my reading concluded Shigalov was a forerunner of Stalin. Wasn’t it some of the other characters he was associated with, the dilettantish ones, that preceded our ‘woke’ culture? What am I missing?
Leith
I’d advise you read that section of the speech to get the context, but Putin cites the famous Shigalyov quote “Emerging from boundless freedom, I conclude with boundless despotism” and then goes on to relate it to cancel culture. My understanding of Demons, encapsulated well in that quote, is that at its core it concerns the paradoxical and self-defeating nature of the nihilist revolutionary movements that swept Russia in the 1860’s (the same intellectual forces that produced Nietzsche’s thinking). Like all good literature of the genre (e.g. Animal Farm) it works for all sorts of situations because its message is universal. So yes, it works as a predictor of the 1917 revolution and rise of Stalin’s police state (or the WEF’s efforts to enslave and probably exterminate most of us – in the name of Science) but it also works just as well as a parable for the logical endpoint of Liberalism – i.e. wokism’s absolute intolerance of the unwoke, cultural despotism. Here is a good article on just that reading of Demons, if you are interested. IMO this is what Putin was getting at.
https://unherd.com/2019/02/youre-reaping-what-you-sowed-liberals/
Barbara Ann –
I’ll put it on my re-read list. Maybe that will let me see what your Professor Gray is talking about. But I note that Gray is an atheist per his wiki page. So I can’t figure out why he disses Shigalov and friends, who according to Dostoevsky were God-hating atheists.
In my totally layman’s understanding, atheism ran a gamut from passive defensive non-belief in the existence of a God or gods . . . to active aggressive true belief in the non-existence of a God or gods ( Atheism!). “Atheism!” is militant and missionary as shown by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others. Perhaps the “God-hating atheists” written about by Dostoevsky were militant missionary “Atheists!” ?
Geez, I have “Demons,” just need to up it in the stack. But this, “Exercising his freedom as a “god-man”, Kirillov shoots himself.” It’s easy to kill, destroy, and knock down. It’s hard to build and impossible to “give life.” And if you want the now-a-days worthless a…… Yuval Noah Harari.
cobo
“Now, fast forward to the early 21st century when we just don’t need the vast majority of the population.. ..because because the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology, like artificial intelligence [and] bioengineering, Most people don’t contribute anything to that, except perhaps for their data, and whatever people are still doing which is useful, these technologies increasingly will make redundant and will make it possible to replace the people”
Yuval Noah Harari is today’s Shigalyov, demonic through and through. In this quote he perfectly describes where we are today; the end of the Enlightenment project. The science and technology that was meant to lead us all to earthly salvation has become the goal in itself, we are redundant. No doubt a very scientific method will be found to dispose of the waste.
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2022/08/10/wef-adviser-yuval-harari-we-just-dont-need-the-vast-majority-of-the-population-in-todays-world/
Barbara Ann, “… those of us who admire (Putin’s) leadership…”
Does that included poison and window exits?
Admired, past tense.
I also admired (past tense) Putin’s handling of the Russian political scene. He impressed me as 100% committed to the well being of Russia Russia and Russia. Is Putin a murderer, maybe. Are the Clintons murderers, maybe. Is Putin’s govt corrupt, I think so but so is America’s. I am not basking in moral relativism. I’ll take America every day of the week, but I admire Putin’s love for Russia except for one important thing. The Russian/Soviet Empire is over, and those annoying little Slavs, Balts, Finns, and Swedes aren’t taking any more shlip from “mother”. Putin can’t accept that but he can accept the death of 70M men! No one should be so powerful as to command the lives of thousands over his lost longings of empire. I too hope the next Russian leader is as conservative, patriotic, and wed to the glory of Russia’s as Putin, but w/o the wish to return to 1914.
Putin has no desire to restore the Soviet Empire, and most definitely not the Russian Empire. Both Russia and the RSFSR subsidised most of those empires. I’m pretty sure that Russia will be happy to let the Romanians, Moldavians and Hungarians take back their ethnic kin in the Ukraine. Poland will be more than welcome to take back Galicia. (May God help the Poles).
All Russia wants is for Russians in the Baltic Statelets to be treated with respect. If they continue to persecute Russians in contravention of EU laws, then the consequences will be of their own making.
The Finns entered into a neutrality agreement in the 1947 Paris Treaty, if they break that, then Russia has no obligation to observe the 1920 Tartus Treaty.
A few questions occur to me…
What about the status of Kaliningrad? I think there’s some real room to argue that it should be returned to Germany, or Poland, or Lithuania.
Regarding the Baltics and Finland, what precisely will Russia’s position regarding NATO Article 5 activation if they go too far?
Finally (setting aside Crimea, which it’s pretty clear at this point will end up back with Ukraine), what will Russia’s position be on Ukraine’s legitimate historical claim on Taganrog? Or Finland regarding Karelia?
I’m not sure that line of enquiry ends well for Russia.
Peter Hug
the whole point of all this is to respect the current borders between European countries.
Otherwise you open a can of worms.
What about Poland getting a big chunk of Germany, or Belarus and Ukraine getting a big chunk of Poland and so on.
Europeans have fought countless wars over borders and it is best to let the sleeping dogs lie.
I don’t know why Putin thought trying to take parts of Ukraine would end in anything but a terrible mess and possibly a disaster.
Yes Peter, and did you know that this is the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”? Peace and Love, brotherhood … I forget the rest; no matter. Ukrainian subordination to their masters, woops, mother has been essential to the Russian people for 200 years. So too with the Balts, Finns, Swedes, and I’d bet Putin would give Poland a go if he thought he could dance a polka fast enough. Your post is interesting w/r to the Tartus Treaty. Did someone forget to tell Stalin about that?
It is time for Moscow to return Crimea to Ukraine, and Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) to Germany. Lying, cheating stealing is the central essential sacrament of Muskovite kultur.
Skako,
No one is seriously asking for the return of Kaliningrad to Germany or any change in its status. Crimea back to Ukraine is an entirely different story.
TTG –
The Czechs are mocking Putin by saying they are annexing Kaliningrad. A joke of course and not serious as you say. But they probably have as much or more right to it than Putin does to his recently annexed parts of Ukraine.
https://www.newsweek.com/czech-petition-annexing-kaliningrad-russia-signed-thousands-1749063
Leith,
In a similar vein, one of the Lithuanian government leaders sarcastically tweeted out a map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at its 15th century grandest claiming a historical claim to all that land after Putin claimed that Ukraine should forever be part of Russia.
Since the Russian Empire bought what are now the Baltic Statelets from the Swedish Empire, no-one can refuse the right of Russia to own the Baltic Statelets, since they were bought and paid for in full!
Peter Williams,
That’s akin to buying stolen property. Russia didn’t get to keep what it bought and it didn’t get its money back, either. Tough shit, Rooskies.
Shako if lying stealing and cheating is native to the Russian has it been learned from the Mongols. Or, are all Balts, Slavs, Finns, and Swedes similarly inclined?