There's no way that the number represents Russian dead. Firstly, there would be no way for Ukraine to verify that. If they drop a cluster bomb on 30 guys, they're going to report 30 casualties, regardless of whether those soldiers are wounded, killed, or can return to action at some point in the future. They don't have someone walking through the field after every firefight tallying up the dead.

Secondly, if you figure 3 wounded for every 1 killed (and use the Ukrainian figure for casualties), that would put Ukraine's estimates at about 1.2 million Russian soldiers wounded or killed. There's no way that's right.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I always interpreted these casualties as wounded included and estimate a large part of those have been recirculated into combat after becoming fit again. That also means that some are counted at least twice. If this really were accurate kill numbers, Russia would've dropped out of the war already. 200k body bags is unsustainable, even for Russia.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Pringles @elbucho there are no body bags of eliminated russians. There is an overwhelming stink over the combat zones. Of rotting russian corpses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh for sure. But there are a lot fewer than 300k corpses. I'm guessing it's sub 100k. Which is still an enormous clusterfuck of epic proportions, mind. As a reminder, the US had ~58,000 dead over the course of the entire war in Vietnam (~10 years total for active operations). Russia has had probably around twice that number killed in less than 2 years in Ukraine.