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who is going to arrest putin?
Russia's Invasion of Ukraine (Official Thread)
- Thread starter newarkhiphop
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Secure Da Bag
Veteran
Whatever the Russian equivalent of a legal impeachment is. Or a straight up coup.
As Russian Troop Deaths Climb, Morale Becomes an Issue, Officials Say
More than 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in less than three weeks of fighting, according to conservative U.S. estimates.
March 16, 2022, 6:43 p.m. ET
A Ukrainian soldier used an antitank weapon to destroy a Russian vehicle in Iprin, Ukraine, last week.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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WASHINGTON — In 36 days of fighting on Iwo Jima during World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed. Now, 20 days after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia invaded Ukraine, his military has already lost more soldiers, according to American intelligence estimates.
The conservative side of the estimate, at more than 7,000 Russian troop deaths, is greater than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
It is a staggering number amassed in just three weeks of fighting, American officials say, with implications for the combat effectiveness of Russian units, including soldiers in tank formations. Pentagon officials say a 10 percent casualty rate, including dead and wounded, for a single unit renders it unable to carry out combat-related tasks.
With more than 150,000 Russian troops now involved in the war in Ukraine, Russian casualties, when including the estimated 14,000 to 21,000 injured, are near that level. And the Russian military has also lost at least three generals in the fight, according to Ukrainian, NATO and Russian officials.
Pentagon officials say that a high, and rising, number of war dead can destroy the will to continue fighting. The result, they say, has shown up in intelligence reports that senior officials in the Biden administration read every day: One recent report focused on low morale among Russian troops and described soldiers just parking their vehicles and walking off into the woods.
The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, caution that their numbers of Russian troop deaths are inexact, compiled through analysis of the news media, Ukrainian figures (which tend to be high, with the latest at 13,500), Russian figures (which tend to be low, with the latest at 498), satellite imagery and careful perusal of video images of Russian tanks and troops that come under fire.
American military and intelligence officials know, for instance, how many troops are usually in a tank, and can extrapolate from that the number of casualties when an armored vehicle is hit by, say, a Javelin anti-tank missile.
The high rate of casualties goes far to explain why Russia’s much-vaunted force has remained largely stalled outside of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
“Losses like this affect morale and unit cohesion, especially since these soldiers don’t understand why they’re fighting,” said Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama administration. “Your overall situational awareness decreases. Someone’s got to drive, someone’s got to shoot.”
But, she added, “that’s just the land forces.” With Russian ground forces in disarray, Mr. Putin has increasingly looked to the skies to attack Ukrainian cities, residential buildings, hospitals and even schools. That aerial bombardment, officials say, has helped camouflage the Russian military’s poor performance on the ground. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said this week that an estimated 1,300 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war.
Signs of Russia’s challenges abound. Late last week, Russian news sources reported that Mr. Putin had put two of his top intelligence officials under house arrest. The officials, who run the Fifth Service of Russia’s main intelligence service, the FSB, were interrogated for providing poor intelligence ahead of the invasion, according to Andrei Soldatov, a Russian security services expert.
“They were in charge of providing political intelligence and cultivating networks of support in Ukraine,” Mr. Soldatov said in an interview. “They told Putin what he wanted to hear” about how the invasion would progress.
Russians themselves may be hearing only what Mr. Putin wants them to hear about his “operation” in Ukraine, which he refuses to call a war or an invasion. Since it began, he has exerted iron control over the news outlets in Russia; state media is not publicizing most casualties, and has minimized the destruction.
Ukrainian military patrolling Kyiv on Wednesday.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
But some Russians have access to virtual private networks (VPNs) and are able to get news from the West.
“I don’t believe he can wall off, indefinitely, Russians from the truth,” William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told the Senate last Thursday. “Especially as realities began to puncture that bubble, the realities of killed and wounded coming home, and the increasing number, the realities of the economic consequences for ordinary Russians, the realities of the horrific scenes of hospitals and schools being bombed next door in Ukraine, and of civilian casualties there as well.”
The news of the generals’ deaths is trickling out, first from Ukrainians, then confirmed by NATO officials, with one death acknowledged by Mr. Putin in a speech. They have been identified as Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov, a commander from Russia’s eastern military district; Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, first deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army; and Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
Western officials say that around 20 Russian generals were in Ukraine as part of the war effort, and that they may have pushed closer to the front to boost morale.
“Three generals already — that’s a shocking number,” Michael McFaul, the former United States ambassador to Russia, said in an interview.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian officials reported that a fourth general, Maj. Gen. Oleg Mityaev, the commander of the 150th motorized rifle division, had been killed in fighting.
Two American military officials said that many Russian generals are talking on unsecured phones and radios. In at least one instance, they said, the Ukrainians intercepted a general’s call, geolocated it, and attacked his location, killing him and his staff.
If Russian military deaths continue to rise, the kinds of civic organizations that called attention to troop deaths and injuries during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan could once more come to prominence.
But the Russian toll, some military specialists and lawmakers say, is unlikely to change Mr. Putin’s strategy.
“It is stunning, and the Russians haven’t even gotten to the worst of it, when they hit urban combat in the cities,” Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said in an interview.
“I don’t think it’ll have an impact on Putin’s calculus,” Mr. Crow said. “He is not willing to lose. He’s been backed into a corner and will continue to throw troops at the problem.”
Bruh.
I'm honestly thinking the Ukrainian figures might be closer to accurate.
seeing this in real time makes you wonder if Russia HAD to lose that many soldiers in WW2.
This shyt is ridiculous.
This shyt is ridiculous.
Impeach the Supreme ruler brehs...
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CEO of Morgan Industries
Superstar
To your first argument:
I only pulled one example. I didn't have to point to the CCP's harassment of Ai Wei Wei for his art or their jailing of Tibetan monks and artists for daring to express their Tibetan ethnicity, among many, many other examples.
As for Australia, they don't threaten wayward game designers with jail time. Every society has societal restrictions, but here in America, you get Tipper Gore wasting taxpayer dollars with dumbass hearings and an "explicit lyrics" label on music. In China, you get disappeared by the CCP. There is no real comparison...unless you're shilling.
There is a reason that South Korea and Japan are producing movies that have worldwide popularity and that either in part or as the main point get at the very economic disparities in their countries that you are talking about, like Parasite and Drive My Car, and China can't. The CCP has that shyt on lock. South Korean conservatives don't love Bong Joon-ho, but they're not putting his ass in prison for criticizing their country. Your false equivalence with Australia is embarrassing, breh.
As for economic disparities, let's not pretend that China doesn't have massive economic disparities themselves. The difference is that I or an Australian or a South Korean or a Japanese can make a movie or book about that shyt, and a Chinese can't unless they want to risk jail time. That is the sort of freedom people want. They want economic freedom, yeah, but Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is true. They want to be able to express themselves, especially once they're settled economically. Your assertion that everyone on earth just wants a modern middle-class lifestyle isn't shocking and has nothing to do with the discussion here.
To your second argument:
I never said that they shouldn't build up military.
I said, in response to someone saying that China doesn't want to bomb and only wants to trade, that it's some bullshyt and we can see that via their years-long military build-up.
And before you get on some "oh, that's just to defend themselves from the West," a) we know that no one in the West is invading a nuclear power and b) the CCP is imperialistic and definitely will look to bomb people and take their land if they can get away with it. If they could take Taiwan right now with no backlash, they would.
But you seem to be sympathetic to the CCP, so I'll ask you why. Obviously, I'm sympathetic to the West, but I admit that. Why are you sympathetic to the CCP? You can believe what you want, but don't cloak it in "no shill" and then spend your time shilling.
Probably no one. My guess is that he gets offed, as he is blaming people closer to him. Maybe he never faces charges, but there are going to repercussions that will be felt for Russia for a long time coming. Everything about this feels different, as countries are piling on sanctions, with Russia looking weak each day.
Damn, the fat Russian crehs gonna feel it in the coming years.....
They better be plotting to overthrow Putin, to eat those McD's again.
Able Archer 83
Two Minutes to Midnight
For perspective, Soviet losses in WW2 averaged 7,000 military deaths every 36 hours.
