A narrative needs to be close enough to the truth to keep it afloat. Pile up the lies, and it will eventually sink. Using ‘Truth Bombs’ may sink the ship of your opponent before your own ship succumbs to the waves. In my essay posted yesterday, I *mentioned* an alleged hack of Ukrainian military files, which translated into a total of 1.7 million Killed in Action, and Missing. To which a Ukrainian MP, Artem Dmytruk, responded by acknowledging that Ukraine lost ‘several generations’. Because the hackers are Russian, everybody and his or her dog pointed out that we need to be *extremely* careful with such revelations, since they are likely propaganda. And I agree.
But if those data lists names, rank and info related to their identity, as someone claimed on his vlog, we’re more likely dealing with a ‘Truth Bomb’. Mind you, as I noted yesterday, ‘missing’ *does* include those who deserted, right? They may still be alive and well, in hiding somewhere in Ukraine, or they found a way to cross the border into one of the neighboring countries. Or they switched sides.
Trump went on record recently with figures claiming the exact opposite. Scores of dead Russians, and hardly any Ukrainians killed. He didn’t mention his source, yet many pro-Ukrainian, pro-NATO pundits swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Even though they are willing to admit that Trump is not exactly known for telling the truth. And I’m being polite.
One commentator I follow closely who told his audience that 1.7 was an unbelievably high number, was Willy OAM, but even Alex Christoforou said that it was likely ‘too high’, thus fake-news. On the other end we’ve got colonel Douglas Macgregor who has floated numbers in that range the past couple of months, sources unknown, and yesterday I came across a video on the excellent ‘Dialogue Works’ channel which had investor Martin Armstrong as a guest, and he mentioned an even higher number, allegedly based on his personal Ukrainian sources, which have been correct in the past, according to him.
Various ‘studies’, all using different methods, claim to know the answer to how many people lost their lives during this war with Russia on Ukrainian, and Russian soil, but each and every one of them with a ‘margin of error’ out of the ballpark. Also recently, there have been exchanges of the bodies of dead soldiers, which revealed that Russia had *much* more to ‘offer’ than Ukraine. Willy warned that this shouldn’t be interpreted as conclusive evidence of far higher Ukrainian losses, since the Russians are gaining ground, so they are more likely to come across the bodies of dead Ukrainians than Ukraine, which is retreating, will stumble on dead Russians. Which doesn’t exactly sit well with the narrative that in 2022 the Russians were not retreating to dig in for the next phase, a War of Attrition, as I maintain, but were soundly defeated, before they managed to stop the bleeding. Anyway, at the end of the day studies and estimates won’t trump hard data. If they are *real*.
Willy and others have their professional doubts, because there is this rule-of-thumb that in a war between equals (more or less), fought along frontlines, the attacking force will have higher losses. And since the Russians are seen as the attacking force, they are bound to have higher losses. Other methods to estimate the number of KIA have been developed as well. And they do not point in the direction of such incredibly high numbers. But then again, according to Ukrainian reports which surfaced recently, or as quoted in the Western media, the number of deserters has skyrocketed. And if these people are listed as ‘Missing’, that figure sounds a lot closer to reality, for anyone who is looking into the fighting capacity remaining. And that is key to accessing the developments on the battlefield. I’m not interested in the propaganda-value of such numbers at all. Every single soldier killed in this stupid war to secure NATO-expansion is one too many.
Another argument to explain ‘unbelievably’ high casualties, is the effect of ‘FAB’s’ and all sorts of missiles which strike positions where soldiers are training or assembling, manning airfields, ports and air-defense positions, or engaged in logistics operations, far removed from the front-lines. And Russia is clearly the far superior force in that respect. Those soldiers are KIA, though they never came close to the front-lines. Willy and others also explained that ‘Paint by Numbers’ approach of the Russians extensively. They first level the place, and then they move in. As you level the place, there will be plenty of casualties on the side of the defending force, and zero, or close to zero on the attacking force, upsetting that dogma of higher casualties on the side of the attacker. We’ve grown accustomed to treating this war as a struggle between two armies of comparable strength, but I insist that this is fiction. The Russians are ‘sitting back’ for a reason. Their *aim* is attrition. And their tactics since Bakhmut reflect that. While Bakhmut was Prigozhin’s baby, who pleaded Moscow to upgrade the war to a war of conquest, and sought to pressure Putin into doing his bidding, before he was cast aside, and died in a crash of his private jet.
And finally, as acknowledged by *everybody*, Ukraine has no reserves left, is sending untrained soldiers, and the ‘old timers’ still alive have been serving for three years straight. Though their experience may have grown to make these ‘veterans’ battle-hardened, not having had any rest must have its effect on their stamina and ability to stay wide awake, increasing the risk of getting killed while dozing off. That is ‘Attrition’ too, and it is certain to result in higher casualty rates on its own.
In other words, I do not rate that figure of 1.7 million as ridiculous, while I think there are valid arguments to assume that the Russians are indeed losing *much* less men. In fact, as many observers noted, the Russians have no real difficulty to find new recruits. People join for various reasons, obviously, but if the Russian losses were as huge as Trump said they were, while Ukraine’s losses were benign in comparison, that knowledge would spread like wildfire, and put the brakes on recruitment drives. In fact, Ukraine has been facing that problem for quite some time now, and men trapped by scavengers roaming the streets to find fresh cannon fodder resist being ‘drafted’ by those gangs, and so are their spouses and family members, resulting in fights everywhere around Ukraine.
If you do not have the forces left to fight, your buoyancy as an army is gone, and if the lies of the general staff and the politicians pile on more garbage as cargo, that ship will go down.