In casualties as in military losses Ukraine is doing quite badly: Ukraine has lost some 300 000 as dead and wounded, while the Russia has lost around 800 000 as dead and wounded. The population difference is 1:3½, and the difference in total military losses is 1:2½. That means, Ukraine is losing a slightly larger share of its population as military casualties than the Russia is.

However… Neither side is going to run out of population anytime soon. Ukrainian soldiers go to the front, eventually maybe get wounded and return home one leg poorer. Their children will not have to live with their father, only without an organic right leg of the father. And for the Russian side, the deaths are a much bigger proportion of the population. There the ratio is around 1:4½, and that one favours Ukraine.

If a person is measuring ground gained in this war, he does not understand the war very much at all. Neither side is trying to gain ground. Both sides are trying to incur as much losses to the enemy as possible. The Russia because they need to keep the gore to the maximum in order to convince the west to stop supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine, because if the Russia’s losses drop under 1000 per month, they will be able to start training their soldiers, which will make a huge difference in their dangerousness. The Russia knows very well that it will never take over Ukraine with the current speed of advancing. Remember, in year 2024 the Russia was gaining ground faster than expected. And in year 2024 they managed to gain 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total territory. Less, if you take the Kursk province’s happenings into account. 0.7 % is strategically meaninglessly little.

Artillery shell production is currently about twice as high in the Russia as it’s in the west. But when you take into account that to hit a specific target, the very inaccurate Russian artillery needs to shoot about ten times as many rounds as western artillery, the numbers start looking different: For military use, you either should divide the Russia’s artillery shell numbers by ten, or alternatively multiply ours by ten. Depth of reserves… Well, here we come back to casualties and motivations.

• As said, the population ratio is 1:3½.
• The total military casualty ratio is 1:2½, favouring the Russia.
• The military death ratio is 1:4½, favouring Ukraine.

Russian soldiers are in it for the money. The Russia will have useful amounts of money to give to the soldiers for another six to fifteen months, about. After that the motive is gone. Typically, it is easier for the defending party to find soldiers for a war than it is for the aggressor. This is the case in this war as well. This means, when interpreting the casualty ratios, you need to add a multiplier for taking into account that the defender can tap into a larger share of the population than the aggressor can.

Remember, Ukrainians are sending to the front less than a fifth of what they could, if we compare with Finland. Finland has a population of 5,6 million and we have about one million soldiers ready to serve within some months of the begin of a hypothetical war. Each one of them has received a top-class military training and each one has a specific place in a specific unit in the army should a war break. Ukraine has about the same size army as that, even though they have over 40 million people. The unwillingness to join the front is a surprising feature, at least from a Finnish perspective, but also a result of a lack of motivation. If the scales were to tip in the favour of the Russia, Ukrainians would get scared and more would be ready to help their country. When looking at the very large difficulties Ukraine has with conscription, you need to take this into account. The problem is of a type that solves itself. It’s extremely unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they never get relieved. And idiotic that people don’t want to join the army because soldiers never get relieved from the front … because there are not enough people ready to go to the front. And, from my experience living in Ukraine, I would say that this won’t change. They will remain understaffed as long as the war will go on, but always precisely at the limit where they can still keep scraping on.

Ukraine’s army won’t be disappearing anytime soon, the west is effortlessly able to pay all of Ukraine’s budget indefinitely if it so wishes and the Russia is not able to gain any ground. The Russia’s goals are to cause Ukraine to collapse economically or its army to collapse from lack of manpower, and neither of those can happen. At the same time, the Russian economy, and therefore military, have at max one year time left. After that they will have nothing to use for stopping Ukraine from reclaiming its territories.

EDIT: I want to add: While the Ukrainians’ readiness to defend their country is lower than Finns’, that’s mostly because Finland has an exceptionally high readiness for that. If you compare with Germany or France, the Ukrainians look extremely willing to go to the front. What I wanted to say is that although their willingness is very high, there is still a lot of place for improvement!

Putin bootlicker is my guess

*stolen by russia

Sources? Also that doesn’t fucking justify bombing kids, but you do you.

Why not support both underdog victims of a imperialist regime?

I get supporting Palestinians, but why plead the Russian cause?

You’re not looking if you see us not complaining.

Okay Z oomer

No, the bombs will once it’s army is destroyed, and any attempts to rebuild are routed.

who is kidnapping kids?

I hope you’re right. Because in general the reaction of the Russian population to the war has been so meek, I’m starting to doubt it would be any different once recruitment starts hitting the biggest cities.

yes kidnapped ukranian teens are so muck better trained. 🤡

they will run out of capable troops

I think you’ve got the wrong tense there, comrade.

Honest question, what makes Ukraine troops that much better trained?

Yup. And that means the Russia will be losing huge amounts of troops and equipment without gaining anything from it. The Ukrainian economy is very small, I think about the size of Slovakia’s economy. The EU can hold Ukraine’s economy up as long as it wants to. Nobody is doing the same for the Russia.

If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?

I think these guys are CIA bots. They aren’t using common sense. Everyone including the state department and CIA agrees that Russia has air superiority right? What do you think the casualties of Russia are compared to Ukraine?

Ukraine publishes daily statistics about Russia’s manpower losses. One would think those numbers are simply propaganda and any army would “of course” exaggerate such numbers.

But, firstly: The numbers reported by Ukraine rise and fall hand-in-hand with the numbers given by Oryx. There is something of an almost fixed multiplier between Oryx numbers and official data provided by Ukraine. And the Oryx numbers are always published later than Ukraine publishes its own, so Ukraine cannot be just copying Oryx’s numbers and multiplying them. And it’s logical that Oryx shows only a fraction of the real number, because for most Russian combat losses there is no photo proof, and Oryx only counts what has photo proof.

So, at least the Ukrainian numbers rise and drop without fake data added. Then the question is whether the scale of the numbers is correct, or if Ukraine intentionally inflates them with some static multiplier. Since there is data about the Russia’s recruitment capacity and the whole size of the Russia’s army, it’s visible that by recruiting about 1000 per day they can keep their army’s size constant. That shows that the losses must be around the same ballpark. And it coincides with the numbers published by Ukraine.

But yes, now that Russians mostly do not have tanks to use in their attacks, they are really using pure meat wave attacks, and that costs a LOT of men. There’s a reason Putin is trying to convince Trump to force Ukraine into an armistice. Losing that many soldiers – indeed almost half a million per year! – is extremely unsustainable, no matter what image Putin is trying to give.

And remember: these numbers are about irrecoverable losses, of which only a fraction are deaths. The number of deaths is far lower.

As much as that made me laugh it’s not true. I wish it was though.