Comment by somenameforme

Comment by somenameforme 3 days ago

I think very few, if any, countries in the world would be stronger than what we turned Ukraine into. You have a massive army being replenished by a constant slew of bodies, to the point of forcefully dragging people in off the streets, and then being armed with hundreds of billions of dollars in Western arms. But what gives Ukraine a particular superpower is their logistics.

Most people don't realize is that war is essentially a giant deadly game of logistics, and so the typical plan for Russia would be to simply destroy the logistics pipelines arming Ukraine. But thanks to the people 100% responsible for maintaining Ukraine's military managing to maintain a strategically accepted neutrality, it's impossible to fundamentally disrupt their logistics pipeline outside of small scale black ops stuff.

So that has turned this war into a war of attrition where Russia is advancing slowly, but mostly setting the goal as essentially having Ukraine simply run out of Ukrainians. And they seem to be succeeding. Once the real death tolls for this war are revealed, people are going to be shocked. You don't need to drag in people off the streets, close your borders, and continually lower the enlistment age (in a country with a severe demographic crisis) if you're not suffering catastrophic losses, especially since as the amount of territory you have to defend decreases, you need fewer soldiers to maintain the same defensive density.

wqaatwt 2 days ago

> You don't need to drag in people off the streets, close your borders, and continually lower the enlistment age

As you said Ukraine’s demographic situation was quite horrible before the war. Very few people in their 20s. Hence the conscription age being 27 earlier in the war. They lowered it to 25 later (which is kind of the inverse of what happened historically in other wars).

Russia had way more manpower, then the cannon fodder from North Korea and the foreign mercenaries. Russia can afford even 1:1.5 or 1:2 casualty rates (of course they have other concerns and seemed to be very politically unwilling to send actual conscripts there and the pool of willing volunteers is not infinite).

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Ray20 2 days ago

> As you said Ukraine’s demographic situation was quite horrible before the war. Very few people in their 20s
This is a perfect situation for waging war. Young people are prone to rebellion and overthrow the authorities that send them to war.
> Hence the conscription age being 27 earlier in the war. > seemed to be very politically unwilling to send actual conscripts there
It is exactly because of that reason. The younger the people, the more dangerous they are for the government.

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artursapek 3 days ago

When would the real death tolls be revealed? When Ukraine does a census?

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somenameforme 3 days ago

Once the war ends and both sides can start clarifying their troop classifications. There's always going to be uncertainty because an MIA could be dead, or it could be some guy who successfully deserted and started a new life for himself somewhere. But as both sides return captured troops, exchange bodies, and so on - everything will be made much more clear. And there will also be less political motivation to lie.

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- amanaplanacanal 3 days ago
  
  Do you think Ukraine has more casualties than Russia? Or is it simply that Ukraine had a smaller population to begin with?
  
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  somenameforme a day ago
  
  I think this is impossible to answer for now. All you can do is look at known data and draw probable conclusions with an extremely high degree of uncertainty. So what do we know for certain about each side and the current state of the war?
  Russia: Invaded with less than 200k soldiers. They later on mobilized approximately 300k soldiers. This mobilization was extremely unpopular and resulted in mass resistance within Russia, Russians emigrating and so on. Since then they swapped entirely to a 'voluntary' system of deployment, with some reported incidents of coercion. Benefits for soldiers are extremely high which is likely driving a significant rate of enlistment. Soldiers are demobilized after their contract ends, which is a very important issue for a war entering into its 4th year.
  Ukraine: Had approximately 300k soldiers before the invasion. After the invasion they closed their borders, prevented men of 'fighting age' from leaving, and declared a general mobilization so that anybody between the ages of 27-60 could be forcibly conscripted and deployed to fight. They have carried out this mobilization very aggressively as well as constantly lowered the minimum age, and standard, of mobilization in a country that already had a severe demographic crisis before the war. Demobilization is somewhere between inconsistent and nonexistent.
  Current: Both sides seem to agree that Russia has a significant manpower advantage with an army of approximately 700k soldiers remaining in Ukraine.
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  To even begin to create comparative casualty measures you need to create estimates for how many soldiers Russia was able to 'voluntarily' enlist and estimates for their contract length to account for demobilization. And then you need to contrast this against how many people Ukraine was able to conscript and mobilize. You can find numbers for these online, but nobody's even pretending to try to be remotely objective and there's highly organized propaganda abounds, so the numbers are completely meaningless.
  And then on top of that you also need to somehow figure out how many are actual casualties and how many are desertions. For instance Ukraine has apparently filed more than 300,000 criminal cases over desertion. Of course they also have numerous major motivations to avoid KIA classifications. So basically yeah - you're not going to be able to realistically estimate casualties on either side, with anything even resembling a reasonable degree of confidence, until the war is over.
  
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  wqaatwt 2 days ago
  
  Probably not but it’s unlikely to be that massively different, Ukraine wasn’t that much less willing to engage in “meat grinder” style tactics earlier in the war. Even 1:1.5 rate would be pretty horrible given the demographic disparity.
  
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hylaride 3 days ago

For Ukraine, war deaths would likely be a footnote compared to emigration when a new census is eventually completed (I don't mean to sound cavalier, but am trying to put things into perspective). An estimated 20% of their population has left since the start of the full scale invasion - ~10 million people - by now they've settled into new lives abroad (my 8 year old daughter's class here in Canada has 3 kids from Ukraine alone).
Ukraine is going to have some painful demographic issues to deal with when the dust settles (and I am cheering for them!).

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- Ray20 2 days ago
  
  > Ukraine is going to have some painful demographic issues
  The scariest thing is that even in the best-case scenario, this may no longer be possible. Even before the war, Ukraine's demographics were dire, then young people left, and no matter how the war ends, there's no objective reason for them to return.
  
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  somenameforme a day ago
  
  It depends on what happens. If Europe/US just shrugs and moves onto the next thing after the war, which is probably the most likely outcome, then yeah. But there is a real chance that they try to go full Marshall Plan with the goal of weaponizing Ukraine. If so, then there's going to be a lot of money flowing about there with some big opportunities.
  
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