RE: Russia and Ukraine
January 15, 2024 at 4:18 pm
(This post was last modified: January 15, 2024 at 4:44 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(January 15, 2024 at 4:13 pm)ShinyCrystals Wrote:(January 15, 2024 at 4:03 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Not really. 2021 population: 145 million. 2022 invasion forces: ~ 200,000. Follow-on forces committed: about half-a-million more. A good portion of the latter 500,000 are indeed either convicts, immigrants, or Russians from distant, outlying oblasts. What this does is concentrate the losses amongst social pariahs or racial/ethnic minorities who live away from the centers of political power.
All of these factors undercut the development of both effective combat power and morale, especially when we look at how these troops are used tactically, in massed human-wave tactics that waste lives.
Thanks for clarifying the first part, Thumpalumpacus. Looks like I did not recall correctly, after all. Still, we do learn things and it is good to be corrected, too.
Anyway, yeah, I can see what you mean on the second part. It might be obvious already, but it goes to show that Putin does not care about the lives of even his own people, and it seems like he is desperate to win, but does not seem to know what he is doing.
Russia had never won by caring about the lives of her own people, but most of her people are still obsessively proud of the several notable, and notably costly in blood, victories she achieved throughout her history. Russia likely incurred greater total casualties in 1/6 the time during the ultimately successful 1939-1940 winter war against Finland. So the story about the cost of the Ukrainian war to Russia is mainly intended to create the anecdotal impression in the west that the proxy war is justified, the cost has a payoff, and success is in sight. The impression does not withstand scrutiny.
If Russia won, I doubt the cost will burden the reputation of the government that pulled it off very much. In fact, for as long as the west tries to continue to contain and isolate russia after the Ukrainian war, the cost of Ukrainian war would be even further reduced as a factor impinging on Russian domestic view of the government that waged the war. It’s only when Russia and the west begin any reapproachment that the cost of Ukrainian war would likely spur any reflection.