The Washington Post Sings a New Song

[Sertorio]

20,000... 144.500... same thing, I know.

Do you know the difference between being dead and being injured? And the difference between an irremediable injury and an injury which can be healed? I can always advise you a good English dictionary, as you have more than once shown not to dominate properly the English language...

[SteveFoerster]

Be practical. The latter figure was total irredeemable losses, so even those who are merely mangled body and soul by your hero Putin's war of choice are still no longer able to be sent back to your meat grinder.

[Doc]

It's always been clear that this is a war of attrition, and that Ukraine is not immune from their side of that equation.

Oh my! A first seed of doubt!...

Search this forum for 'pyrrhic victory'. I said a year ago that was one possible outcome for Russia.

Why "Pyrrhic"?...

100's of thousands of dead untrained Russian soldiers. Unless of course you want to argue that that is a good thing that so many Russians have died. Of course I am sure that is what Putin is arguing to his oligarchs

The BBC has done some research through obituaries in Russia and came to the conclusion that about 20,000 Russian soldiers had died in this war, since February 2022. Which seems to fit the estimation that Russian casualties are about 1/10 of the Ukrainian ones. So, once more, why Pyrrhic?...

have seen photos of fields outside of Baktmut littered with the bodies of Russian soldiers. Given the Russians are using WWII tactics it is not in the least surprising that 100's 1000s are dead. Russian lost 20 million soldiers in WWII

[Sertorio]

Be practical. The latter figure was total irredeemable losses, so even those who are merely mangled body and soul by your hero Putin's war of choice are still no longer able to be sent back to your meat grinder.

The BBC can use open sources to find out the number of dead, but the number of injured soldiers is based on an estimation that there are usually 3 soldiers injured for every dead soldier. But it is impossible for the BBC to know how many of the injured can return to duty and how many cannot. So the figure of 144,500 irretrievable losses is pure guess work.

[cassowary]

Russia has the advantage of a larger population - about 3 times Ukraine's population. So they can suffer more casualties. In a war of attrition, In a war of attrition, Ukraine must kill at least 3 Russians for every one dead Ukrainian soldier.

Obviously, a war of attrition is bad for Ukraine. So Ukraine must instead wage a war of maneuver to capture territory, especially the psychologically important Crimean Peninsula. If the Russians lose Crimea, their morale will be broken. Putin will lose the confidence of the Russian people. They will get angry with him. I don't think he can survive.

The Russians have always regarded Crimea to be a part of Russia. Its been a part of Russia since Catherine the Great captured it from the Ottomans. At that time, the Romanovs, who were of German descent, wanted Russia to become more western.

So to promote their westernisation policies, they had to convince the Russian people that they were Europeans. Crimea helped the Czars to do just that. In ancient times, there was a Greek settlement there.


Ruins of Chersonesos.

Thus Crimea allowed Russia to claim to be a very old European civilisation. That's why they drove out the Muslim Tartars from Crimea so as not to ruin their narrative. We all know of the Russian imperialistc claim that Moscow is the "Third Rome", another reference to classical European Civilisation. After Rome fell, Constantinople took over as the centre of European civilisation. Constantinople fell to the Turks. So Moscow is now the new centre. You may not believe this, but the Russians do. Catherine the Great was said to have lamented that St Petersburg was not built in Crimea.

After centuries of brainwashing, Crimea has central importance in the Russian identity. They are convinced Crimea is Russian since ancient times and not just when Catherine the Great conquered it from the Turks. Or what they have been told had been a lie for centuries, which in my opinion, was indeed the case. It seems that the Czars told as many lies as Putin.

Besides this, there is another reason why Crimea is important. It has Sevastopol, Russia's only warm water port, meaning it does not freeze in winter. This allows Russia to project its power through its navy throughout the world.

If Crimea is recaptured by Ukraine, the Russians will know that they have lost. No amount of propaganda by Tass will convince the Russian people. I doubt that Putin can survive such a disaster.

[neverfail]

Very good essay, Cass.

Russia has the advantage of a larger population - about 3 times Ukraine's population. So they can suffer more casualties. In a war of attrition, In a war of attrition, Ukraine must kill at least 3 Russians for every one dead Ukrainian soldier.

Obviously, a war of attrition is bad for Ukraine. So Ukraine must instead wage a war of maneuver to capture territory, especially the psychologically important Crimean Peninsula. If the Russians lose Crimea, their morale will be broken. Putin will lose the confidence of the Russian people.

But after losses in trained military manpower incurred already do they have enough military manpower left to pull off such a risky stunt?

Besides this, there is another reason why Crimea is important. It has Sevastopol, Russia's only warm water port, meaning it does not freeze in winter. This allows Russia to project its power through its navy throughout the world.

Well, yes and no Cass.

Take a look at the map and see that the Black Sea is a near landlocked inland sea which can only be entered and exited via two Turkish controlled straits. The Bhosperous, the most northerly of the two, is less than a kilometer wide adjacent to Istanbul (ex-Constantinople). Russian vessels can only pass through to the eastern Mediterranean if the Turks don't stop them.

(Once in the Mediterranean they are in another near landlocked sea with only a pair of narrow exit/entry points at either end. The Med in that sense resembles the Black Sea writ large.)

I have no doubt that during the entire Cold War period US military intelligence (not quite an oxymoron) must have had "representatives" permantly, comfortably, seated on the shores of the Bhosperous keeping tabs on all Soviet vessels making their way along that waterway in both directions.

Given the plethora of naval bases (some of them far offshore) and ports the US has on both the Atantic and Pacific Oceans (neither one landlocked) the Soviet Union could not have done the same to movements of US navy vessels even with the help of their spy submarines.

What I am contending here Cass is that Russia's ability to project power out on the world at large is permanently compromised by that factor of geography.

This will especially make itself evident during times of international conflict - like during the First World war when Ottomon Turkey was an ally of the Central Powers. Not only could not a single Russian ship get out of the Black Sea but out of desperation to get badly needed supplies and provisions in to Russian forces to keep Russia in the war the Anglo-french alliance waged a futile campaign in 1915 to wrest those straits from Turkish control.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short- ... s-campaign

[cassowary]

You raised very good points, Neverfail. But having a warm water port gives the Russians a starting point at least. In the event of war, the next hurdle is the two Turkish controlled straits. If they get through that, they got to get out of the Mediterranean which can be blocked at the straits of Gibraltar and the Suez.

[neverfail]

You raised very good points, Neverfail. But having a warm water port gives the Russians a starting point at least. In the event of war, the next hurdle is the two Turkish controlled straits. If they get through that, they got to get out of the Mediterranean which can be blocked at the straits of Gibraltar and the Suez.

Exactly right Cass. So ultimately the Russkis are stuffed by their own geography.

[Sertorio]

Russia has the advantage of a larger population - about 3 times Ukraine's population. So they can suffer more casualties. In a war of attrition, In a war of attrition, Ukraine must kill at least 3 Russians for every one dead Ukrainian soldier.

Obviously, a war of attrition is bad for Ukraine. So Ukraine must instead wage a war of maneuver to capture territory, especially the psychologically important Crimean Peninsula. If the Russians lose Crimea, their morale will be broken. Putin will lose the confidence of the Russian people. They will get angry with him. I don't think he can survive.

The Russians have always regarded Crimea to be a part of Russia. Its been a part of Russia since Catherine the Great captured it from the Ottomans. At that time, the Romanovs, who were of German descent, wanted Russia to become more western.

So to promote their westernisation policies, they had to convince the Russian people that they were Europeans. Crimea helped the Czars to do just that. In ancient times, there was a Greek settlement there.


Ruins of Chersonesos.

Thus Crimea allowed Russia to claim to be a very old European civilisation. That's why they drove out the Muslim Tartars from Crimea so as not to ruin their narrative. We all know of the Russian imperialistc claim that Moscow is the "Third Rome", another reference to classical European Civilisation. After Rome fell, Constantinople took over as the centre of European civilisation. Constantinople fell to the Turks. So Moscow is now the new centre. You may not believe this, but the Russians do. Catherine the Great was said to have lamented that St Petersburg was not built in Crimea.

After centuries of brainwashing, Crimea has central importance in the Russian identity. They are convinced Crimea is Russian since ancient times and not just when Catherine the Great conquered it from the Turks. Or what they have been told had been a lie for centuries, which in my opinion, was indeed the case. It seems that the Czars told as many lies as Putin.

Besides this, there is another reason why Crimea is important. It has Sevastopol, Russia's only warm water port, meaning it does not freeze in winter. This allows Russia to project its power through its navy throughout the world.

If Crimea is recaptured by Ukraine, the Russians will know that they have lost. No amount of propaganda by Tass will convince the Russian people. I doubt that Putin can survive such a disaster.

Your capacity to fantasize knows no limits. What you wrote is mostly BS, but it gave you the impression of finally getting why Russia does what it does... Hopefully facts will finally catch up with you, but meanwhile you should try to forget all that nonsense which got stuck in your mind...Understanding Russia and Russians takes a little more than reading the Reader's Digest...