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asiatic hordes with extra words to mask the racism and give a little copium to the west.
I remember when the "counteroffensive" smacked against the Surovikin Line, and Russia MoD posted some numbers for casualties. A navalnite lib I know (from waaaay back) mocked it, smugly asserting that the ratio was greater than the one at Omdurman.
But I guess this 7:1 idea is fine by them
I doubt the Ukranians think the ratio is 7:1. But they've gotta convince western taxpayers it's, in Lindsey Graham's words- the "best money we've ever spent" to keep the MIC money flowing.
Russia has ten times Ukraine’s population though, they COULD lose 7-1 and still grind Ukraine’s population down to forcing a surrender.
Not really. The relevant metric is “combat power”. If the attackers out number the defenders or if the attackers have more big guns and more ammo than the defenders then the casualty ratio can be much worse for the defenders.
Russia likely both outnumbered the Ukrainians in the sector and even the Ukrainian side described Russia as having a 5-10x artillery advantage, with Russia saying 10x.
Under those conditions the actually observed historical casualty exchange ratios in modern battles would suggest significantly worse casualties for the Ukrainians despite being the defenders. Possibly even much worse casualties with some battles from the US experience in WW2 and Korea said that with sufficient “combat power” they documented even a 5:1 advantage for the attackers.
Most battles see defenders and attackers taking roughly equal casualties in fact.
http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2018/03/05/comparing-the-rand-version-of-the-31-rule-to-real-world-data/
Part of the reason for this is that basically defense isn’t a static thing. Defending a place actually involves going on the attack as well. You don’t just sit there and wait for the enemy to slowly roll you up, you have to hit back to disrupt his plan. Defending in modern war actually involves a lot of attacking.
Also the attacking force has the initiative. They can choose where they want to attack, from where they want to attack, and when. The defender is forced into a more reactive role.
Given Russias large combat power advantage and given that Russia had the initiative and so was able to partially siege and take its time with the attack to maximize strategic advantage, and given in the end it became a disorganized rout, actually you’d expect Ukraines losses to be probably worse and possibly a lot worse.
No, being dug in in a battle where enemy have significant artillery advantage can cause 7 to 1 but the 7 is lost by defenders. Compare for example with US battles on the Pacific, where Japanese were heavily dug but still took many times the losses of attackers despite the attackers using infantry pretty actively and aggressively too.
Marx said eventually the contradictions of capitalism will cause it to collapse on itself. Later on in life he agreed with revolutionaries, of the Lenin ilk, that perhaps it won’t collapse on its own and direct intervention has to happen. He might have just been wrong about the timing and it might have taken an extra hundred years. We see that the liberal foreign policy has created a checkmate.
How can you claim Ukraine is this horrific tragedy when it’s significantly tamer than in Palestine where a genocide is going on and the government is telling people to relax that it’s not that bad? How can they rally the normie liberal to really care about Ukraine again without making Israel look bad? If anything the US might just throw Kyiv/Kiev under bus to save Tel-Aviv.
I get what you mean, but that first line is a bit silly in the sense that Lenin was 13 at the time of Marx’s death lol.
I think the way Marx should be understood is that there isn't a way capitalism can remain stable in the long term, contradictions will lead invariably to crises. Not that he can predict the future exactly how that unfolds. It's like looking at a house built on a cliff prone to mudslides and predicting that shit's gonna collapse eventually
It loosely reminds me of the Foundation Sci Fi series. In the novel, a Mathematician creates a new field he calls psychohistory, basically a mathematics of sociology, vaguely dialectic materialism. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations, and the first thing he sees is the inevitable collapse of empire.
Haha I was thinking of Foundation when I wrote that comment!
SPOILERS AHEAD
I'm reading the Foundation now (some prequels and in 6th book now) and while at first it was deep disappointment that the Seldon plan was not only just the second imperium, but achieved by the mind control and mentalist ubermensch ruling the galaxy (got a real good heads up how stellarly would that work in 5th book), but with the introduction of Gaia it turned out to be incredibly hilarious.
Gaia is basically utopian communism, sustainable, classless, moneyless society, which furthermore is centrally planned and follow literal democratic centralism (or at least it works like that because group consciousness). But seen by the lib eye, "human nature" problem which no liberalism ever can overcome even in speculation, is eliminated by being group consciousness. Even funnier, arguments used against Gaia by Trevize and some other people mirror arguments used by liberals against communism. If i didn't know Asimov was ultimately a lib and anticomunist i would thought it was a bait.Also, never allow mathematicians to plan the future.
These reports of losses in Ukraine, even some outlets admitting defeat, makes me wonder if this was the reason why that display in the library was set up.
Very likely, they're desperately trying to reignite support that the war enjoyed in the first few months. The problem with emotional manipulation of this sort is that most people can only stay emotionally invested in a particular topic for so long because it's exhausting. Eventually, people just grow numb and even if they still support your cause, they're no longer fervent about it. On top of that, it's becoming increasingly clear that the writing is on the wall, and people are now able to engage with the subject more rationally precisely because they're emotionally exhausted.
I honestly can’t tell if the student body is receptive to this anymore, I know I’m not. This definitely feels like a desperate attempt to keep support up but at the end of the day it doesn’t seem to be as effective anymore, at least to me. People don’t linger around the display and when Ukraine is brought up in my classes people don’t get super feral over it either, at worst they’re still annoying about it but not in the “send weapons and troops” way. I do wonder if Canada will be desperate enough to start drafting considering how leadership acts towards Zelensky and Ukraine in general, they just won’t let up.
My impression is also that public support is drying up. One visible indicator is Ukraine flags that were plastered everywhere quietly disappearing. My anecdotal experience is talking to people at parks when I go out to do photography. At first I was kind of reluctant to talk to random people because I assumed my Russian accent could lead to some unpleasantness. But I was surprised to discover that pretty much everyone I've talked to was pretty upset with Canada being involved in this. General mood seems to be that people think the government should be focusing addressing domestic problems such as cost of living, housing, etc. Nobody understands why we should be sending billions to Ukraine while our own standard of living keeps declining. People are starting to connect the cost of the war with their own material conditions.
I do think that Freeland is very personally invested in the whole project, and will try to do whatever is in her power to keep this going. However, I simply don't see how this thing can keep going for much longer. Importantly, US is clearly losing interest in Ukraine now, and it's simply not realistic that the war can keep going without them. Trying to institute a draft would be incredibly unpopular, and there's no chance they could push that through to make any difference.
I also haven’t seen many Ukraine flags, the ones that I do I think just belong to Ukrainian people (like hanging on a house). I have seen a few cars with weird trident stickers but they’re so few and far between that they barely register. In 2022 I saw quite a few demonstrations on street corners, but I haven’t seen a single one since. Your anecdote breaks my heart but I’m glad it seems to be getting better (besides that weirdo harassing you and your wife). Russophobia is such a horrible reality here, I don’t think I will ever get over how at a heritage festival, the Russian display was banned.
Freeland is a huge problem but I also think Trudeau is too, even without US support of Ukraine I believe Trudeau would still be invested in this losing battle. I only think this due to how he acts towards Zelenskyy and this article. I hope this whole thing comes to an end before 2025, the sooner the better, but who knows at this point. If they do implement conscription I will gladly go to jail for draft dodging, but yes historically it is not a popular concept at all (especially for the French).
Yeah, the harassment thing was something else. Seems to have stopped at least, but we still don't know who the weirdo is.
And my view on Trudeau is that he's just an airhead. He strikes me as a really superficial person without any real understanding of how the world works. He's been pampered his whole life, and he's your stereotypical liberal who thinks that everybody in Canada is living their best lives, that Canada is the pinnacle of democracy, and nothing better is possible. People like Freeland are much more dangerous because they're actually intelligent, and they know exactly what they're doing.
I'm also hoping that this whole thing ends sooner than later, but like you say, very hard to predict such things. A lot of western leaders staked their whole political careers on this proxy war, and there will be disastrous consequences for them once Ukraine loses. They will go to any length to try and salvage this somehow. Their big problem is that without US this project is dead in the water.
Honestly, my take on the issue is that it's not just a Freeland and Trudeau issue (though both are particularly terrible). The problem stems much deeper than the present lot of politicians; the very culture within our political institutions are deeply compromised, by Banderites and many other "special interest groups" like the Khalistanis, Tibetan theocrats, Falun Gong, etc. in a manner similar to the influence of Zionists (which goes beyond and predates AIPAC, of course) across the west and particularly the US.
What we have is an issue where these reactionary circles have, and will continue to until weeded out (or until the present political system is overthrown altogether), produced generations of political talking heads drawn directly from their number, and countless sympathizers- the process has been a positive feedback loop which originates from the long history of Canada (and the west) directly welcoming all the worst examples of humanity into the halls of power in the first place- basically collecting reactionaries from around the world like playing cards. The political elites' culture as such is a world of difference (and not for the better) from mainstream Canadian culture as a result- Liberal, NDP, Conservative, I don't expect things to change till the US backs out- they have the two (or three) party monopoly, after all.
gee, i thought Ukraine was winning and was on the offensive this whole time
The 7:1 K/D ratio is from...
"The losses of Russians around Avdiivka are colossal. My colleagues and I did the calculations and pulled up our archival records from the beginning of the year," said Dmitry Likhovy, Ukrainian military spokesman.
emphasis mine
~https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lost-thousands-of-personnel-and-400-tanks-in-avdiivka-2024
Ukrainian forces pulled out, they haven't counted bodies, this is a pretty wild number. I wonder what time frame they're using for their "calculations" and just how much of the fighting in areas around Avdiivka were being included in the numbers?
Ukraine just making up numbers is a well known phenomenon at this point, what's amusing here is that western media keeps taking them at face value.
I heard quite the opposite, that at the start of the war it was 5 UKR per 1 RUS but now that ratio is more like 10:1, which would make perfect sense, considering the late-war Volksturm state of the UKR "military".
