For context: Germany invaded Poland (population ~31 million) with 60+ divisions, and that invasion required almost a month to succeed, with the Soviets jumping in partway through to quicken the end.

Russia has invaded Ukraine (population ~41 million) with ~13 divisions, less favorable weather, and vastly more urbanized terrain to fight through. While they have made some absolutely embarrassing mistakes, they are fielding the largest army seen in a generation, and still conducting offensive operations.

Not even the US has put 13 divisions into a theater since....Vietnam? Korea? Desert Storm was ~9 US divisions + allies. The big difference is we can show up with ~9 divisions that will be well-supplied and well-motivated anywhere in the world (and with endless air support to make up in bombs what we might lack in manpower), while Russia has a terribly motivated and already-hungry army even in their own backyard, and surprisingly not enough ordnance to make up for it.

One early vid featured a Ukrainian civilian driving up to a stopped Russian APC. The Russian crew said they were out of gas. Your vehicle has a 300km+ fuel range and you ran outta gas 50km from the Russian border? WTF? Did you leave your Assembly Area with a 1/4 tank of fuel?! No I don't think the Germans ever launched an invasion with such poor preparation.

>>>struggling to use what they have in the field effectively in most of the battlefield

We've been discussing some examples at work (with an Iraq-veteran Staff Sergeant and a recent infantry company commander): videos of just absolutely terrible security habits from the Russians. I don't care if they are unmotivated conscripts: you've gotta realize by now that you are in "Indian country". You need to keep your head on a swivel and watching your surroundings if you simply want to NOT DIE. There were parked tanks getting knocked out by ATGMs at fairly close range.....doesn't make sense when the T-72B3 has a thermal imager, and it's winter, so body heat should stand out at a reasonable distance. The crew should be scanning the treelines periodically with the thermal.

There's some aspects of the war where I'm willing to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt because, as I said, nobody has done this in 30+ years, maybe even 50+. But there are FAR too many flaws where we are sitting shocked and thinking "You guys suck so bad at your JOB, that I'm embarrassed for you."

I think if I were to summarize the "Russia is failing" narrative it's that Russia expectations of a quick, easy victory were completely unmet, and now even if Russia does want to occupy Ukraine it's not going to be the quick and easy decapitation strike that they thought it would.

So your argument is you assume Russia wanted to take Ukraine in 100 milliseconds, and if people can't prove you wrong you win?

I'd actually like to read more of this, if you have happen you have a source at hand.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-believes-russia-planning-de...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/05/ukraine...

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/russia-aiming-to-decapit...

https://www.axios.com/russia-seeking-decapitate-ukrainian-go...

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-invasion-of-ukraine-w...

Yes. They have shown they are not well organized, have poor leadership, have defective planning, are terrible at logistics, have poor discipline in the ranks.

Eh. I don't understand others military analysis. Russia is doing the right thing to just sit a convoy north of Kyiv. Ukraine doesn't have air power anyway. If they rolled into Kyiv it would be a urban combat meat grinder. They are better off waiting until the forces from the south and east meet south of Kyiv. Then they can surround Kyiv and shell it to rubble [what they learned in berlin]. Wait for white flags, then roll it. Ukraine needs to wipe out that northern convoy NOW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOS-1

Vacuum explosives aren't nuclear, but god damnit: https://pomf2.lain.la/f/7vj9hxrh.mp4

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNMiInhXIAQHEdl?format=jpg&name=...

You might want to hold your judgment until things are over. You don't judge a football match after the first 10 minutes are passed.

In reality, this is an almost total disaster for Russia so far. No matter what, Russia will not recover from the last 12 days in the next fifty years. International support for Ukraine will only grow stronger. The scale of verified Russian losses was NEVER predicted by anyone prior to this invasion. Prior to invasion, the reports were almost entirely about how fast Ukraine would fall.

Now, everything is about "Russia is yet to send it's best, it's early days, etc" - from the same "experts" and talking heads.

With regards to what you have said, of course never underestimate your enemy, and yes it may sadly be on the early days, but you could do this to get one single data point of what is happening:

1)research and find the most likely estimate of Russian troop deaths so far. 2)using that number, estimate the number of injured Russian troops (military experts can help you here, wars are somewhat predicable with death/injured ratios). 3)add those two numbers together.

What number do you come up with, and show your workings please.

For context, I have some hard currency, but I'm not spending it as yet. Electronic means of payment are fully functional - spend at the supermarkets, or pharmacies, without issue (other than supply issues at supermarkets of course). I haven't yet tried an international bank transfer into Ukraine, but I suspect it would be OK. I use an EU issued bank card, it works no problem (I also have a UA bank card as backup)

At the moment, therefore, the best thing to do: get money into the hands of regular Ukrainians. Personally, I have been raising funds from abroad and using the money to either give directly to Ukrainians (via bank transfers), or purchasing food etc and delivering it (in my local area) to the most vulnerable. At the moment, if people run out of money, they will run out of food.

Keeping people fed, keeps people sane. It's the most effective thing for Ukrainians that are remaining in Ukraine.

I would say the second most effective thing, is asking your politicians to do more - that may be providing lethal aid, humanitarian aid, or money, to Ukraine.

Further - logistics are incredibly compromised now, in every possible way. For the moment, money is the most effective solution. The situation is fluid - what Ukraine needed yesterday, is possibly not what they will need tomorrow. Money can be used immediately to help purchase what needed, with respect to what is actually available.

Internet in Kyiv has been stable the entire time.

Edit

> purchasing food etc and delivering it (in my local area) to the most vulnerable.

is there more information here? a way to do this over the inet that can be verified as legit and not a scam? If so, i can see this being very useful. I've been seeing people rent AirBnbs in Ukraine all of social media to get money in people's hands. I'm wary of fraud though, it's a situation ripe for fraudsters to take advantage.

The problem is, I see we both have our contact details empty on HN.

If you can suggest a way for me to contact you, I will reach out. I don't want to be compromised (which for me, is a bigger threat than normal right now).

what matters is how you adjust vs your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, even during military operations, because nothing is known in advance.

With massive aid from...the United States.

Somehow I don't see the US running arctic convoys round the clock to re-supply the Russians this time.

Did you perhaps grew up under Russian occupation, like I did, and not learn in school about Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacts? We were only taught the part after 1941 where Russia gloriously liberates Europe.

I did personally know a person that was close to me (he passed away about a decade ago) who had been a soldier on that front, he was in Odessa, in Crimea and all the way East to the Don river. He considered that the war started when his commander in chief at the time, marshal Antonescu, had ordered him and his fellow Romanian soldiers to pass the Prut and attack the Soviets, in June 1941. As it happens marshal Antonescu is considered a war criminal, and he was indeed a war criminal if you look at what he did to the Jewish population from Romania. That didn't count for people like that close person of mine I had told you about, who regarded him as a hero because marshal Antonescu was one of the the only persons who really wanted "to defeat the Bolsheviks" (I'm quoting my close acquaintance on this). That's why history around these parts of the world is really, really complicated, is not black and white all the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Antonescu

Regardless, I don't think anyone has ever thought the post-Soviet Russian military could take on NATO in conventional warfare, but that doesn't matter because they have nukes.

And the Ukrainians don't even have a full complement of modern weapons. IIRC, they're mainly getting sent infantry heavy-weapons at the very last minute. Even the US was pretty stingy with things like Javelins until very recently, out of fear of "provoking" the Putin.

Since the Baltics are in NATO, I doubt they'll have as many issues with getting more/better weapons. Hopefully they'll also take some lessons from Ukraine (e.g. really, really beef up their reserve forces and military training for their civilian population).

Also, since they're actually in NATO, they can hopefully count on better support from their allies than what the Ukrainians have gotten.

At that point you'd have to ask yourselves: who would risk nuclear escalation to retaliate for Latvia or Estonia? not the US. Would the UK bomb Russia with London on the line? probably not.

Just about everyone has more to lose than Russia at this point, which is an incredibly dangerous situation to be in.

I'm not saying I know the answer. But this is what strategists on the US/NATO side would be thinking about, and Russia sure knows they would be thinking about it. It would be madness to gamble on this strategy working out in the long run.

Obviously Russia would not start a nuclear war. It will simply take steps that either need to be conventionally opposed or dare US/NATO to go nuclear. Sanctions are hoped to collapse the economy of Russia and put the fear into the Chinese and other fence sitters. It's like running the clock down in a game. US probes for incremental steps (the famous "salami slicing") to ramp up counter force. Nothing should happen until we have Russia's promised counter-sanction response this Tuesday. After that next move is getting planes into Ukraine and possibly NFZ. What follows will be a non-nuclear hypersonic attack on NATO airfields used. And so on. Until someone lobs a nuke.

Oh no, that wouldn't be their objective. Which would be rather 1) military (obliterate resistance) and 2) political (show the resolve to use whatever means they deem necessary).

I think the major conclusion from the Ukraine war is that the Russian army is not in a particularly strong condition, and certainly would not fare well against superior NATO forces (particularly the air forces.) And this is assuming they are not further degraded by a long, bloody occupation in Ukraine. Nuclear first-use is a move from weakness, not strength.

Also, keep in mind that Russia is already spreading FUD about Ukrainian dirty bombs (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...).

All of NATO

NATO have been quite clear that the line is attacking a NATO member. Russia is pushing that line by invading a country they believed was about to join NATO, but they have not yet attacked a NATO country

If you think Russia can nuke a NATO population center and we're going to sit around and pretend like nothing happened, you're crazy.

That's MAD.

If the US retaliated with a bomb on Russian soil, would the expectation not be full-out nuclear war? Would it be smart for the US to enter that because Russia bombed Latvia?

This is not a case of Turkey whining about a few kurds blowing up a few police stations, this is the raison d'etre for the whole thing. Renouncing NATO duties would be the worst loss of dignity the US ever experienced, and would jeopardize its richest partner market, with uncalcolable losses.

I think Russia could even get away with "peace keeping" a "Russian separatist group" in a Nato country like Latvia.

Which is what makes this war so strange. Russia could've easily stolen Donbas - and NO ONE in the world would've cared. They could've taken away one state at a time, and NO ONE would have cared. There was no reason to rush.

But if Russia nuked a NATO population center, or even just invaded to this degree a NATO country - that's MAD.

But, what this war has exposed is how bad the russian army is trained, and how not so great their equipment is. While a prolonged war would be hard for any country, they struggled from the get go.

I hope this doesn't embolden the US and Europe to be more aggressive. I really hope that cooler heads eventually prevail.

WRT to the really really far fetched ( I hope ), that Russia would launch any nuclear strike. The missile defense systems that NATO and the US have were built exactly to counteract Russian missiles in a situation like this. This will even accelerate the development of hypersonic interceptors ( afaik, already in final stages) .

It would mean total annihilation of russia, as their in flight missies would be intercepted, and it would guarantee a total attack by the us. ( we as a nation tend to over react... and not go tit for tat ).

I hope this never happens. The reason why countries need leadership changes often. And why stable leaders are needed everywhere :-/

But it’s not clear what NATO membership’s really worth for Eastern Europe. I’m from EE and I don’t understand why the US or the UK would risk their countries or even WE getting nuked for EE.

I have the feeling that EE was accepted into NATO just to piss off the Russians and put some space between them and WE. Just like with Ukraine before it went sideways.

I don't think that's the plan. Also, no one is going to use tactical nukes against a city. The last thing Putin wants is to look like a mere terrorist. (And no, the Russian forces aren't using terrorist tactics in Ukraine.) So, the first one will probably be used against a military installation (a weapons depot, a radar station, a war ship, etc.), most likely in Poland.

That is the point behind asking for US soldiers to be permanently based. They are a sign of commitment. An "engagement ring" if you will. Without the US soldiers there it becomes much easier to ignore an attack.

That's the very point of the existence of NATO. If NATO doesn't retaliate, it could as well not exist. Fortunately the Western reaction to Putin's invasion helped to unite NATO and everybody knows that if we give in, there is no reason why Putin should stop at any defined point.

If a President as unpredictable as Trump happens to be in office, I wouldn't be so sure.

That's not to mention the drastically increased risk of accidents once even a one-sided nuclear war has begun.

Think of how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.[1] Once nukes start flying the risk grows much higher, even if there are still (presumably rational, cautious, and non-hawkish) adults in control.

[1] - https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/lone-russian-submar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

One could argue anything, but I don't think there is a good argument for that position. In fact, I think it's painfully obvious that such a leader makes it less likely that efforts at avoiding conflict will be successful.

No, it doesn't, and, no, it isn't.

NATO is very public about not saying what its specific response plan on various nuke scenarios is.

Also don't forget that France has the Nuclear Reset Button available. I count on them to convince the Russians not to deploy nukes.

We need an EU army nevertheless. And to deploy this army we'll need some proper governing entity for the EU.

Not saying they can’t improve but their best case is starting to look like a many years struggle where they bankrupt their country and lose hundreds of thousands of people and end up worse than when this started.

Judging by what has been said (or implied), there won't be a conventional war.

Also seem to remember some scandal with some RAF pilots getting very shitty food at an airbase in Cyprus during the Iraq (or Afghan?) war. That one is more fuzzy for me, though, and maybe it's not even that important, as in shitty food in the military might be a fact of life.

Later edit: I did search for that Cyprus thing, turns out it was more recent, from 2014, since the West was bombing ISIS [1]:

> Raids against Islamic State are being conducted from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus "with broken jets and tired and fed-up people", BBC Newsnight has been told.

and

> In a letter, a serviceman said the base was being neglected, morale was poor and ground crews had taken to eating humanitarian rations meant for Iraqis.

Having to take food from "humanitarian rations meant for Iraqis." doesn't sound ideal to me.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30338659

(they have no ability to project force abroad anyway)

Edit: Out of ~90 something joint non-binding agreements between China and Russia, only 4 were actually acted upon by Chinese government.

Digestion of the economy already started, among other things Russia has joined Union Pay, Chinese payment processor.

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-state-news-accidentally-publi...

Incidentally, the contents of that press release is what really shocked me much more than the invasion itself. It showed their twisted state of mind and that it wasn't about Ukraine, that they see themselves in some righteous crusade against the evil West. EDIT: The link I found is not the original, but others have posted other links. What I saw was a link from Der Spiegel (www.spiegel.de) when this was fresh news and it was just an absurd statement all around. The Twitter link that was posted shows it best.

That article was when it all changed for me. It showed to me that this was not the end from Putin's PoV, but just the beginning of some kind of holy struggle. That article really brought it home to me that we needed to up our defense spending ASAP. Because the Russian leadership had gone insane. Some goals in Ukraine I could have logically understood as Russian interest - but the whole "we against the West" thing was just madness.

I mean, the West was pretty happy financing and equipping Russia and China, helping both to modernize for decades. The West also kept pretty quiet any time Russia did some "special operation". Even the invasion of Georgia did not have any great consequences and was soon forgotten. It appeared to me that the West was quite okay with Russia gaining back some power - to take care of issues like militant Islam in the region. I did not see any sign that a weak Russia was in the Western interest. If there were individuals with a different opinion, who cares, the West has a huge amount of different voices unlike the authoritarian centralized China and Russia. If one looked at what happened it was a huge empowering of both China and Russia by the West, not a weakening. George W. Bush even recommended Ukraine to not go independent (Kiev Chicken speech), the USSR falling apart was all the USSR itself. Did the West like having to scramble to ensure the safety of nuclear tech in the years of Russian chaos? Surely not!

How can China and Russia possibly claim/think that the West is out to suppress them? Modernization in both countries would have been impossible or taken a century without all the very active help from the West. So seeing yourself in some victim role is just ridiculous.

I have some connections to Russia, having visited quite a few times and even done a Russian(!) language course (to fresh up, I already spoke a bit) in Odessa for a few months. I also know people who have businesses in Russia and help foreign businesses to invest there. So I saw and see first hand a bit of the great help Russia got in all areas of business and tech.

How anyone (Russian leadership) can ignore all of that and think themselves into a corner where they think they have to take military action to thwart the evil West? It's just so stupid! Which means there is little chance for diplomacy - the whole thing was not created by reason, so it's hard to use reason to get out of it.

You don't see how, under the guise of "anti-corruption fight", most of the local businessmen (part of them also politicians) would get sent to jail and their businesses acquired on the cheap. That would be ok, of course, if the place of said corrupt local businessmen would be taken by other, non-corrupt, local businessmen, i.e. non-corrupt Russians taking the businesses of corrupt Russians and making them better.

Unfortunately that's not what happens, the place of those corrupt businessmen is taken by Western companies and multi-nationals that are not corrupt on paper because they do not posses personhood (at least not when it comes to doing bad stuff), but which are even more evil because bigger (look at Nestle, headquartered on the shores of the idyllic Lake Leman, no-one is bombing that place any time soon).

Now, you could say: "better have evil Western corporations take the place of corrupt Russian businessmen in Russia!" but the reality is that not everyone thinks like that and that's what this ideological conflict is mostly about.

> fighting against the Westernisation of Ukraine

What business is it of Russia to dictate what other countries do? Insanity!

In your first comment you spoke about Russia, now that I responded you moved on to Ukraine and it makes no sense either.

Last time I checked, when I was in Ukraine, they want to be westernized.

We can go back to your previous comment, if Russia does not want it, you can do whatever within your borders. Nobody complained, as I mentioned, the West let Russia do whatever with little to no repercussions. Russia is not a victim, it is an aggressor, without any logical reason.

Doesn't matter what they want it the guy with bigger weapons close to them has different opinions, that's how international relations work, that's how wars start, that's why we're in here. It's nothing "irrational" about it, as in we've been doing this for millennia.

On a more general point, I can see your point, you're most probably an idealist [1], I for myself I'm a realist, I personally think that realism is closer to how things actually work when it comes to international relations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_in_international_rela...

I'm not sure what you are proud of though, you forced many neutrals or even friends - like me - into an antagonistic position.

> On a more general point, I can see your point, you're most probably an idealist [1], I for myself I'm a realist, I personally think that realism is closer to how things actually work when it comes to international relations.

You start with an attempt of arguments, laudable, but when you find they are easily defeated you jump to in the context meaningless generalities that don't even fit the previous comments in any way.

.

However, your comments do show one thing. There is little room for optimism that sanity and arguments are going to win anything here. I heard even on a German city's market square a German woman selling sausages argue about poor, poor Putin and how the West mistreated him so that he had no choice now but to fight back.

Or just read the comments under a LinkedIn post of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is a friend of Putin. There were quite a few comments there urging Schröder to continue to support Putin, and a lot of insane stuff in support of Putin and against the West. No idea if it was from real Germans, but there is no reason to suspect "bots", there really are plenty of people supporting Putin.

Read the comments and despair: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gerhard-schroeder_der-krieg-u...

> Dear Mr. Schröder, I think you being a close friend of Putin you understand that sometimes a man has got to do what a man got to do. I believe in putin and his insight on the security of Europe as a whole.

Etc etc... not all comments are like this, but many (many are in German) - not least of which are the comments by the Ex-Chancellor himself.

As I said, I don’t think they’re irrational, very, very few international conflicts are irrational on the face of it, nobody goes to war because “they felt like it” or because it “was written in the stars”, that would be trully irrational. I do think though that part of the reason Russia started this war is because they want to fight a war against some aspects of Westernization. They most certainly like Western cars and Western-designed iPhones but it looks like they don’t like certain Western ideologies, like the type of democracy that the West now professes. Again, I don’t see anything irrational in all this.

The “special military operation” isnt over and even Russia is attempting a limited ceasefire to help humanitarian efforts, for the third time, which means its not over due to Ukrainians resisting with some success

I first thought this would play out like Czechoslovakia 1968, with the Soviet/Warsaw Pact paratroopers taking one of the big airports close to the capital, part of the local Army turning sides and the regime collapsing. Under that scenario everything would effectively have been over in 3 days, give or take.

As further proof that that was the Russians' initial tactic is that they only started bombing civilian assets about 5 days in, when it had become clear to them that the initial plan had failed.

No rational actor throws its weight behind an entity doomed to failure. So, we need a narrative that Ukraine is not doomed to failure despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The most optimistic thing we can say is that the people have fought valiantly and Russia did not sweep across the nation at historically unprecedented speed. By claiming that Putin's inner circle expected to win the war in 1-3 days, we can claim that Ukraine is actually winning. And if Ukraine is winning, then everybody who can sanction Russia in any way should do it right now to accelerate Ukraine's now inevitable victory.

In some sense, it is a necessary narrative. If Ukraine doesn't get global support it will fall. Recasting them as the inevitable victor, therefore can be seen as an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it might work (hopefully!)

Society doesn't demand triple-confirmation proof to retell stories that comport with our ideology. This case has some weak concrete evidence in its favor, but that's not the _point_. This is an active war, which means that most of the public information coming from authoritative sources is closely managed to suit the authority's goals.

The supermajority of power in the West wants Putin's conquest to fail. So the narratives we hear will be angled in whatever way to maximize the possibility of that outcome.

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-state-news-accidentally-publi...

Was this published on accident? Or was it intentional? There is no way to know for certain.

Think about this piece of evidence as a data point, but one that is nowhere near damning proof.

So, true, it’s not proof, but Occam’s Razor comes into play here.

That's the only way 200k soldiers can control a nation of 40 million who are united against invaders and united behind a democratically elected government.

Even if half of the first objective can be attained in a few weeks, it will not lead to the following necessary objectives being met. Putin has no viable plan.

Which, if you are making an analogy to Iraq, is somewhat similar: The US had no viable plan to stop patrols being ambushed using the same tactics on the same roads week after week.

I find it harder to believe that he went all-in betting on that gambit.

The Russians were getting high on their own supply and believed their own propaganda that "brotherly" Ukrainians and the ethnic Russians would surrender immediately.

They didn't think they would win in a few days, they thought there would be nothing but token opposition.

To name a few areas. Comms have been a disaster, with lots of coordination over unencrypted shortwave. Likely as a result, air support has been spotty, and EWar has been completely ignored. Air missions have been with small numbers of planes at low altitude to evade active air defense and drop dumb bombs, which means unexpected losses to stingers instead of higher-altitude flights outranging them. 2 weeks in and Ukraine C2 is largely intact, with even some operational air defense and possibly limited Tochka-U strikes. Ground logistics have been uncoordinated with heavy losses to unconventional attacks, done with unexpected effectiveness by Ukraine, and overall morale is far higher than anyone would have expected.

Obviously, information operations play a huge role. That also wasn't predetermined, in large part it's an upset by Ukraine. Who could have predicted that a Zoom call with Zelensky would convince Europe to cut Russia off from Swift when it was impossible to convincingly precommit to it?

There are also signs that Russia at least hoped to win within 1-3 days, like the day 1 VDV assault on Hostomel that ended up failing, and the domestic portrayal of a "special military operation" leaving the population unprepared for the sorts of casualties and bloody warfare that ended up happening.

Here are a couple articles:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-21/r...

https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...

Actual Latvians and Estonians are far more ready to defend their countries.

I don't understand how you can look at the development rate in Baltic countries and decide "it's run like crooks".

From a distance your crooks seem to be quite effective at managing the country.

"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all"

Every country has an obligation to defend itself when attacked. Article 5 makes an attack on any member an attack on all of them.

Short of going "fuck y'all this agreement means nothing to us" every member country has to defend against the attack as if it were on their own soil.

NATO is doing everything it can to avoid war now but i'm pretty sure everyone is preparing to react in case member is attacked

When I first heard that Russia had launched an attack on Ukraine, I thought it would be over in a few days and that Russia would steamroll them completely.

But I couldn't have been more wrong, and if Russia attacks a NATO state I don't see how they can stand a chance.

https://mobile.twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1499352556300... translation https://mobile.twitter.com/mdmitri91/status/1499355164314120...

and already all but 4 dead https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499763642170019846

"Yesterday the conscripts, who were forced to sign a contract or signed for them, were withdrawn from the war zone in #Ukraine. But from a company of a hundred men only four were left alive."

Despite the obviously undemocratic elections, independent polling still puts Putin's approval among Russians at or above W's.

2. Thousands of US soldiers were killed in the Iraqi invasion & occupation.

That was true at first but has increasingly been changing as NATO sources have been reporting numbers closer to the Ukranian reports. That's not saying it's 100% reliable but it suggests the numbers are closer to what Ukraine is reporting rather than what Russia is reporting.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/1-million-flee-ukraine-ru...

> 2. Thousands of US soldiers were killed in the Iraqi invasion & occupation.

This is true, and it turned public opinion against both wars. Now consider what the impact is of having that happen in a week — if the U.S. figures are right, much less the Ukranian, they are rapidly closing on the _total_ number of casualties from their decade-long invasion of Afghanistan in just the current month and all signs point to a long, bitter occupation anywhere they do capture.

All the open source intel analysis I've seen suggests otherwise. Individual battle claims are greatly exaggerated but the overall casualty counts of ~10,000 seems accurate. Hospitals in crimean cities are reportedly overflowing with thousands of wounded soldiers. Vehicles and equipment losses are undeniably staggering. Aircraft losses seem to be confirmed as well, with multiple copters and planes being lost, per day. The convoy north of kyiv is almost certain to draw heavy losses without food, fuel, or shelter from the cold.

Various open source lists, independently curated, align with each other. I know what they say, as my life may depend upon it.

Hello from Kyiv.