2 year anniversary of the Ukraine invasion today.
How is it going? Basically the same as it was at the 1 year anniversary
@dave if you look at the land maps, yes. If you look at casualties and supplies, one side is the clear winner.
@HoneyBadgerSupreme Eh, the numbers I'm seeing are 200k casualties for Ukraine, 330k for Russia. In absolute terms Russia is doing worse, but they have triple the population. Ukraine is certainly exceeding expectations, but this has been at least as painful for them as it has been for Russia.
@dave
> but they have triple the population
Doesn't mean that everyone of the remaining population would be happy to lay his head "for mother Russia". Russia has lost most of the professional army it had before the invasion — I'm not sure how much efforts go into training new recruits, but according to some reports, not much. And as it's not the early XIX century anymore when it was one crowd of peasants vs other crowd of peasants, general population doesn't matter as much. @HoneyBadgerSupreme
@h4890
I agree, it is an important factor, and I believe there's a significant shortage of personnel on the frontline on Russian side, considering how Russian commanders (historically) like this "meat wave" tactic. But Putin of course can't start the new draft before re-election, and the more he delays it the worse it would be, information that you might never return spreads.
I think he originally thought that he has a significant reserve in law enforcement.
@dave @HoneyBadgerSupreme
@h4890
They are abundant in Russia, but it turned out that they actually don't want to be there and they are better prepared to fight for there right not to. Looks like numbers of those who were willing to do it for the money has also significantly diminished. Well, you can always grab some students right on the streets, but greenhorns are of little use, besides sending whose who are strongly against it to the frontline is poor for the morale.
@dave @HoneyBadgerSupreme
@m0xee @dave @HoneyBadgerSupreme
I agree. I've met plenty of russians where I live who emigrated since they do not want to be sent to the front lines.
As for wagner, I wonder if they will continue fighting in ukraine? I mean the point is they get paid well to fight, but isn't wagner now under state control?
If so, will the state pay wagner N times more than the regular soldiers? If that is the case, how will the regular soldiers react?
If wagner is paid the same as the regular soldiers
@m0xee @dave @HoneyBadgerSupreme
I expect it will be a significant salary decrease for them, and they will leave for africa and other private security companies where they are paid way more.
@m0xee @dave @HoneyBadgerSupreme
Another thing to keep in mind is the death rate. The more people get sent to the front and the more people die, the stronger the push back internally in russia will be. When every one neighbour out of 20 has someone who died, it's not a problem. When 80% of the neighbours has someone who died, there will be a tiny bit of resentment against the leader I would think.