Nothing has been harder to measure than war gains in Ukraine. Armchair generals of the left were a year ago predicting imminent collapse of Ukraine, once this or that city fell. Oddly, their predictions became more cautious as Russian supremacy became more obvious. Russian advances were slow because they were by small guerrilla units design to keep casualties low. They had never been as absurd as the as MSM predictions of the imminent collapse by Russia.(The Russian economy was too fragile; Russian losses were too high to sustain)
All propaganda systems exaggerate the casualties of enemies and minimise the casualties of friends.(casualties = dead plus wounded) It is not surprising that the MSM, echoing Kiev officialdom, tells us that Russian casualties are greater than Ukrainian. It was a bit surprising that Patrick Cockburn, the last real journalist with a mainstream presence, seemed to accept this in his Tuesday I-paper column. He says Russian casualties were a million, dUkrainian casualties were “hundreds of thousands” The definite sounding million got into mainstream via academic Jenny Mathers, who got it from CSIS. (Centre for Strategic Intelligence Studies which confusingly shares its initial with a Canadian spy outfit) CSIS is another gung-ho Washington think tank posing as a neutral body. It is run by a former defence secretary of Clinton. Jenny Mathers is a proxy Ukrainian patriot posing as an impartial scholar. On June 3 2025 CSIS put out the claim that Russia had already 250,000 dead and would have a million casualties by summer. I do not know of so definite a source for Ukrainian casualties. In the MSM it sounds that there have not been any. Cockburn was probably trying to guess safely.
During the Vietnam War and Iraq wars, the powers published definite body counts. These were mostly proved false but mostly did pretend to some sort of methodology. I have never heard of any precise body count of Ukrainian dead and wounded. One will emerge after the war. There may have been a massive suppression
Gb
Re: Casualties
Posted by t on December 31, 2025, 9:05 pm, in reply to "Casualties "
Russian advances were slow because they were by small guerrilla units design to keep casualties low.
This has only been true relatively recently when the drone warfare really took off. Don't forget we had artillery war before this phase.
It is not surprising that the MSM, echoing Kiev officialdom, tells us that Russian casualties are greater than Ukrainian.
Yes and no. Depends on the sources and logic. I tend to believe in Russian official sources since they have been verified by commentators/pundits (not Cockburn : )). And secondly the source of RF casualties is MediaZona in partnership with BBC. They have modified their counts in the last 6 odd months but it is still in the ratio of bodies of the fallen exchanged on both sides, logically. 1:10 RF to Ukr .. at least!
on December 31, 2025, 12:45 pm