A Bit More Regarding Ukrainian Casualties

Yesterday we noted that EU Supremo Ursula von der Leyen officially let the cat out of the bag regarding the extent of Ukrainian casualties. Up to yesterday the official narrative—parroted in the compliant Western media, although with exceptions in the US—was that the Ukrainians were triumphing over the hapless Russians. Despite efforts to retract and even change von der Leyen’s public statement, the video evidence isn’t going away. According to von der Leyen the Ukrainians have suffered “more than 100K” killed.

That’s an enormous number, of course, and the “more than” qualification almost certainly points to far worse numbers. The rule of thumb in estimating casualties is that for every KIA there are likely 3-5 wounded. Two points in this regard. First, in the current conflict, in which casualties are largely being inflicted by means of artillery and missiles, a high proportion of the wounded are likely to have been permanently incapacitated. Further, there is probably some question as to what the relation between killed and wounded really is, because the Ukrainians—evidenced by Ukrainian videos—are leaving corpses in water logged trenches alongside living soldiers. It’s a horrifying situation, but the questions remain: have these unfortunates been counted? Were they originally wounded, but are now dead? How has the accounting been conducted, if it has been?

Secondly, and as Andrei Martyanov reminded us this morning, the Ukrainians have almost certainly been hiding the number of KIAs in the MIA category. Obviously, MIA can include all sorts of different occurences, from dead and abandoned to desertion. I have, in the last few weeks, seen figures of 300K Ukrainian missing in action. The overwhelming probability is that a terribly high proportion of those “missing” are, in fact, dead. The bottom line is that the situation is horrendous and that when the Russian offensive comes, perhaps in a few weeks when the ground is permanently frozen, the Ukrainian and Western forces the Russians encounter will be seriously depleted.

Regarding the scale and nature of the Russian offensive, Andrei Martyanov draws an interesting comparison to WW2. This is not to suggest that the modern Russian army will conduct its operations along the lines of the Red Army in WW2—we already know for a fact, based on what we’ve seen, that that will not be the case. However:

Larry About Numbers...

I’ll skip over the quotes from Larry John son regarding casualty numbers. Further down Martyanov draws his comparison, relying on numbers provided by Douglas Macgregor. To appreciate what Martyanov is saying, it’s necessary to understand that, while most accounts of WW2 on the Eastern Front focus on the victorious Red Army’s drive across Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland to the culminating Battle of Berlin, in fact the Balkan Campaign that Martyanov refers to was a very major campaign. The fighting in Romania was heavy and became even heavier as the Red Army advanced to Budapest. and later toward Vienna. Budapest held out until mid-February, 1945. The point to remember is that the resources of the modern Russian army and their qualitative superiority over the Ukrainian and NATO forces are many times greater than the unquestioned numerical superiority of the Red Army over the German Army.

So, Martyanov writes:

And the question we all must ponder: IS Russian Winter offensive coming once the ground freezes? The forces Russia accumulated around Ukraine are now numbering roughly 540,000 troops (per Douglas MacGregor) and this is slightly less than the size of the force Marshal Tolbukhin had in his 3rd Ukrainian Front (Army Group), including 17th Air Army before Balkans' Campaign and the battle for Vienna. 

Just some historic reference points. Of course, neither Tolbukhin's 3rd nor Malinovsky's 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, which combined had 1.2 million troops, had everything Russia has today, but one has to begin to appreciate the scale of what is potentially cooking. Yeah, Patton with his 150,000 men was ready to "drive Russians back to Moscow", LOL. He did have issues with math, being dyslexic. What is left to us is to wait and see, but what many eyewitnesses describe unfolding in Bakhmut (Artemovsk) is an industrial scale slaughter of VSU and NATO "volunteers" to the point that nobody simply recovers hundreds of bodies. We can bet our asses on those KIAs being statistically defined by Kiev regime as MIAs.

Martyanov’s reference to Macgregor is to Macregor’s article at The American Conservative:

Washington’s Carthaginian Peace Collides With Reality

The Biden administration refuses to tell the American people the truth: Ukraine is not winning and will not win this war.

The coming offensive phase of the conflict will provide a glimpse of the new Russian force that is emerging and its future capabilities. At this writing, 540,000 Russian combat forces are assembled in Southern Ukraine, Western Russia, and Belarus. The numbers continue to grow, but the numbers already include 1,000 rocket artillery systems, thousands of tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, plus 5,000 armored fighting vehicles, including at least 1,500 tanks, hundreds of manned fixed-wing attack aircraft, helicopters, and bombers. This new force has little in common with the Russian army that intervened 9 months ago on February 24, 2022.

It is now possible to project that the new Russian armed forces that will evolve from the crucible of war in Ukraine will be designed to execute strategically decisive operations. The resulting Russian force will likely take its inspiration from the force design and operational framework recommended in Colonel General Makhmut Gareev’s work, If War Comes Tomorrow? The Contours of Future Armed Conflict. The new military establishment will consist of much larger forces-in-being that can conduct decisive operations on relatively short notice with minimal reinforcement and preparation. 

Interestingly, General Wesley Clark, of Serbia fame, appears to have broken ranks to some extent. He has been quoted stating that the Ukrainians—under US direction—have played straight into Russia’s strategy. Russia is using artillery, both traditional as well as rocket/missile artillery, on an unprecedented scale. By refusing to retreat the Ukrainians are being demilitarized through horrendous attrition. Per Alexander Mercouris:

In an interview, retired Gen. Wesley Clark said the Ukrainians had been led into a trap in a war of attrition. He talked about the area around Bakhmut as a firestack, a place where Ukraine has had to concentrate large numbers of troops and where the Russians are able to relentlessly shell. The fighting there has gone on for 4 months, causing massive losses to Ukrainian forces.

Finally, on the impending collapse of Western support for Ukraine, France has stated that it is totally tapped out in terms of supplying the Ukrainian army. And Germans are increasingly realizing what they’ve been led into—and they’re turning from blaming Russia to blaming “NATO”, a dog whistle for the US:

TheEqualizer @ColoniumKoeln

#Germany #Russia According to a recent CeMas opinion poll, 40% of Germans fully or partially agreed that the Russian war against #Ukraine was Russia's unalterable reaction to #NATO's provocation In February, only 29% held this view