Sunday, January 7, 2024

Is Russia On Course To Lose 500,000 Troops By The End Of 2024?

Russians conscripted as part of the mobilization in Rostov on October 31, 2022. Arkady Budnitsky/Anadolu Agency 

Business Insider: Russia is on course to lose 500,000 troops by end of 2024, after turning its forces into a 'low quality, high quantity mass army,' says UK intel 

* Russia is on course to have lost half a million soldiers by the end of the year, the UK Ministry of Defense said. 

* Russia's forces have become "a low quality, high quantity mass army," the department said. 

* It will likely take Russia five to 10 years to rebuild its forces to a high standard. 

Russia is on course to have lost a total of 500,000 soldiers by the end of this year if casualties continue at their current rate, the UK Ministry of Defense said. 

The average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the last year, the department noted, citing data from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. 

Neither Business Insider nor the UK's MOD could independently verify the methodology used by the Ukrainian General Staff. 

But the MOD previously said the figures are "plausible," putting it down to mounting casualty figures from Russia's attacks on Avdiivka, a small town on the edge of occupied Donetsk.  

Read more ....  

WNU Editor: In the past year Ukraine and its Western allies have been consistent in underestimating Russian military capabilities while overestimating their losses and short comings. The above claim that Russia will have have lost half million soldiers by the end of the year is just a continuation of this narrative. 

As to what are Russia's military casualties? 

The website known as Mediazona, in collaboration with BBC News Russian service and a team of volunteers, continues to be the best in gathering information on the Russian military casualties in Ukraine. The link is here.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"In the past year Russia and this blog have been consistent in overestimating Russian military capabilities while underestimating their losses and short comings. The above claim that Russia will have have lost half million soldiers by the end of the year is an accurate assumption."

Fixed that for you.

Everyone is engaged in propaganda. Including Mediazona, a Russian owned and Russian run organization. The fact you declare their casualties to be accurate is simply echoing the State line.

Anonymous said...

It's like asking the cat about what happened to the canary

Anonymous said...

40k is definitely too low. Bit you’d have to be a pink haired tranny with a Biden pin to legitimately believe the death toll is anywhere near 500k. That number is absurd. But for the sake of play, even if it were true, to gain half of Ukraine and embarrass the shit out of NATO in the end will have been worth it. The implications of a NATO defeat in Ukraine will resonate for decades.

Anonymous said...

Worth it? Really??

Anonymous said...

What a joke.


The UK ministry would not say where they go their figures from . Of course not. They got the figures from that extremely reliable source of the Ukrainian military. We know those people do not lie!

Then after smoking some really good hash and micro dosing some LSD, UK intel came up with this report.

Russian casualties numbers? Unknown. But you do not hear stories of people having to wait to be buried due to the Grave yards overflowing. 500k rusisan casulties?? That is ukie land trying to justify their own death rate by saying the Russians have the same or more.

No way. Just in the counter offensive alone, the ukies took a beating. Now, It is reported that artillery is now up to 10-20 times more concentrated in favor of the Russians. So ukie casualty rates will only increase.

The other fact. Keep looking at those photos of old men and people being press-ganged on the streets. All indicative of extremely high ukie losses. You d not see the Russians emptying orphanages to get new recruits.

But why do the ukies do this? Because of astronomical casualty rates....all their young men are dead or fled the country.

Anonymous said...

Also, the Russians are not putting young women into the trenches either. The ukies are desperate.

Anonymous said...

858

thats right cris or mr fair and balanced, it has been "pro Russian".

Bullshit.

the blog has been consistently right and you have been wrong. And like Fazman, you are wrong again as usual.

Anonymous said...

Mediazona's figures are not meant to be a realistic estimate of Russian casualties, and WNU Editor knows that. Mediazone reports just 100% verifiable losses from existing public information so it represents the absolute lowest # of possible Russian dead. (A big problem with all reports is that many writers conflate "dead" with "casualties" while the term casualties actually refers to both dead and wounded. So it can be very hard to determine some times what some reports mean.)

The high end of possible Russian casualties are the estimates of the Ukrainian Armed Forces which of course is prone to overestimation. Currently that sits at 365k dead. So the actual number is somewhere inbetween those extremes. But if we take the Ukrainian estimates at face value, we could extrapolate that Russian casualties by end of 2024 would be around 540k.

So what is we believe Ukraine overestimates Russian dead by 50% (meaning if they report 3 dead, the actual figure is 2)? That would leave us with around 360k dead by end of 2024. What if Ukraine overestimates by 33% (meaning if they report 4 dead, the actual figure is 3)? That would be 405k dead by end of 2024. But I think those overestimations are being very generous to Russia.

During the Vietnam War, the US only overestimated body count by 15-20%. And that involved fighting against an enemy that often did not wear uniforms, could hide among civilian population, or could withdraw their losses into thick jungle that was not observable. None of those conditions apply in Ukraine. So if we think Ukraine is at least as accurate as the US in Vietnam war, let's apply that 20% (meaning if they report 6, the actual figure is 5). That number would be around 450k dead by end of 2024. (It also means at this time, the current number of Russian dead is 300k).

Of course these numbers are vastly higher than the UK and US estimates whose casualty figures count both dead and wounded. But it's not clear to me if "wounded" means something like irretrievable loss (meaning the soldier will never re-enter combat) or just someone wounded who can be patched up and sent back into combat relatively soon. If it is the former, I can believe Western estimates as reasonable. If it is the latter, I have trouble accepting such low figures.

By all accounts, it does not seem Russia's current mobilization efforts have generated any new forces. They simply replace their losses. Russian combat capability has readily declined during the two years of war. The last time Russia gained any significant amount of territory was in early summer 2022. Any further gains has been very limited tactically and at the cost of enormous casualties. WNU Editor routinely predicts massive Russian strategic victories every three months or so, but they've never actually happened. The obvious answer is that new Russian victories don't happen because they are beyond current Russian capabilities. Ergo, their losses must be huge.

The best estimates I have heard is that Russian casualties are around three times that of Ukrainian. Given the propensity of meat assaults that seems about right. Likely the only times Ukraine has suffered higher casualties than Russia was in the few months of late spring/early summer 2022 before HIMARS was introduced, and the first two weeks of their 2023 summer offensive before Ukraine changed their tactics. For the rest of the war, it seems Ukraine has suffered much less casualties.

If Russia was not experiencing massive losses, they would not be emptying out their prisons, paying wounded soldiers bags of onions instead of the three million rubles promised, luring Cubans and other nationalities to fight, or offering citizenship to foreigners if they'll just enlist into the military.

I don't know the true figures of Russian losses. But I do think this UK analysis is probably reasonable, and likely on the lower end of true Russian losses.

Chris

Anonymous said...

1239 is smoking some serious hopium again. as explained above the uk estimate has no basis in fact. It is pull a rabbit out of a hat method.

I guess the taking of the "unassailable Fortress Bakhumt". or the fall of "Ever Standing Mariupol" or the failure to take "the soon to be ours goal of Tokmak "

and lets not forget the soon fall of "the impenetrable Adeevka" were all horrible defeats for Russian forces?


It is a wonder that they brought you back on after the holidays. But I forget that trying to fire a GS nug is like pulling teeth. Tell skoda and the rest of the hanover crowd, we say hi.


You conclusions are all wrapped in verbal bullshit.



Anonymous said...

Chrissy


Your last prediction that the Russians will not dictate anything in a future peace agreement is also remembered.

You do not read do you?

No you sit in an echo chamber. Do you ever think about calling or walking over to the Russian intel analyst desk?

if you ever did, maybe you would have heard what Putin said about Odessa.

This war is far from over .

Like it was stated before , when the ship sinks the rats leave. Zelinski will be in Italy or some other haven in about 6-12 months. if not sooner.

Anonymous said...

All of the aforementioned were disastrous for Russia in so far as man power and material losses , you call it a win ?

Anonymous said...

Correct, and any impartial analysis would agree . Russian tactics have and always will be , advance until the enemy runs out of bullets .

Anonymous said...

You both have spent too much time on the MSM bong.

The Ukrainian losses were catastrophically higher than the Russians. They Ukrainian material losses were also higher.

Just one factoid, do you realize during the time of the "grand ukie offensive" that russian losses were at the lowest point in the war?

Of course not. Keep reading and believing the Ukrainian Government situation reports. How is that working for you? They have got you to the point you are at now.

Ukraine has lost this war And it is over except for the crying.

That "any impartial analyst would agree stuff is bullshit. Impartial analysts agree that the Ukies, got screwed by the west and are getting their collective asses kicked.

You people who expound this crap really suck. Your lies are a disgrace to the American people and to the Republic. There is a place in hell for people like you who mislead the people and put them on the road to destruction.