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Ukrainian Tank losses Running Total: 696

Ukrainian Artillery losses Running Total: 426

RuZZian Tank losses Running Total: 2516
December 2023 – 12
November 2023 – 67
October 2023 – 108
September 2023 – 57
August 2023 – 86
July 2023 – 113
June 2023 – 73
May 2023 – 90
April 2023 – 5
March 2023 - 127
February 2023 – 118
January 2023 – 61
December 2022 – 76
November 2022 – 105
October 2022 – 212
September 2022 - 217
August 2022 – 74
July 2022 – 108
June 2022 – 67
May 2022 – 148
April 2022 – 243
Feb 24 - March 2022 – 350

RuZZian Artillery losses Running Total: 942
December 2023 - 4
November 2023 - 25
October 2023 - 77
September 2023 - 48
August 2023 - 67
July 2023 - 56
June 2023 - 47
May 2023 - 43
April 2023 - 24
March 2023 - 37
February 2023 – 41
January 2023 – 31
December 2022 – 19
November 2022 – 55
October 2022 – 64
September 2022 - 73
August 2022 – 21
July 2022 – 21
June 2022 – 18
May 2022 – 20
April 2022 – 52
Feb 24 - March 2022 – 110

Previous day’s thread: https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4201655/posts

Summarizing this war:

A tragedy for Ukraine.
A disaster for RuZZia.
A strategic win for the USA.

“Why Internet Trolls Do What They Do and How to Spot Russian Fakes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLtBzvw0—0

“Here is the best-kept secret about U.S. military aid to Ukraine: Most of the money is being spent here in the United States. That’s right: Funds that lawmakers approve to arm Ukraine are not going directly to Ukraine but being used stateside to build new weapons or to replace weapons sent to replace weapons sent to Kyiv from U.S. stockpiles. Of the $68 billion in military and related assistance Congress has approved since Russia invaded Ukraine, almost 90 percent is going to Americans, one analysis found.”

https://twitter.com/TheDeadDistrict/status/1730119780873441750

I read, in total, some 17,300 tanks were produced by the Soviet Union or Russia between the late 1950s and now.

According to claims by Kyiv, Russia has lost 5,520 tanks since February 2022.

The numbers are all over the place. Depends on where you read about losses.

Excellent video from Perun
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKiFAKMoi0&pp=ygUFcGVydW4%3D

The 3 month party bump is definitively over for Russian crude oil revenue.

October was the brief outlier for crude oil export revenue, when prices were near their peak, and volume was higher, as Russia exported cheap crude to foreign refineries, to produce the more profitable refined products (like diesel), to take the market share suddenly surrendered by Russia, when they idled half of their refineries.

It must be bad, if Putin risks capture by Interpol, to travel to Saudi Arabia, to beg for oil price support.

Even while the low profit margin crude oil exports had a brief bump, the higher margin refined petroleum product exports (like diesel), remained devastated after Russia’s self-imposed complete ban on exports on September 21st. Natural gas revenues also remain a mere shadow of their (pre-invasion, pre-sanctions) 2021 levels. Now crude oil prices are crashing as well:

Russia’s Flagship Crude Oil Falls Below the $60 Price Cap
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russias-Flagship-Crude-Oil-Falls-Below-the-60-Price-Cap.html

“The price of Russia’s flagship crude, Urals, has dropped below the $60 per barrel price cap for the first time in months amid plunging international benchmarks.

The price of Urals crude loaded from Russia’s Baltic Sea port of Primorsk fell to $56.15 a barrel, while the price of Urals at the Novorossiysk port in the Black Sea slumped to $56.55, Bloomberg reported on Thursday citing data from Argus Media. The data is used to inform G-7 policy on the price cap.

Brent Crude prices fell below $75 per barrel on Wednesday, settling at the lowest level since June, amid rising U.S. oil production and inventories, concerns about the Chinese economy, and underwhelming OPEC+ cuts.

Urals crude has been trading above the price cap since July...

...Despite the Urals prices holding above the price cap, Russia’s largest oil and gas exporters saw their total revenues plunge by 41% between January and September compared to the same period last year, due to lower commodity prices and lower exports, Russia’s central bank said in a financial stability review on Thursday.

Over the first nine months of the year, the share of Chinese yuan in payments for Russia’s oil and gas exports jumped from 13% in January to 35% in September. The share of the exports in Russian rubles remains significant – at 39% in September 2023, the Bank of Russia said.”

From Western Rifle Shooters Association comes this truculent comment:

WaPo Blame Game: Who Lost UKR?
This two part series in the Washington Post is a must read because of what it tells the reader about the abysmal perfrormance of the White House and the Department of Defense. I found it genuinely shocking. I knew Biden, Austin and Milley were bad. I just did not appreciate how bad. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 marking the biggest screw up in history, these guys rate an 11.
https://sonar21.com/dissecting-the-washington-posts-analysis-of-ukraines-failed-counter-offensive-part-1/
https://sonar21.com/dissecting-the-washington-posts-analysis-of-ukraines-failed-counter-offensive-part-1/
The blame game about who lost Ukraine is starting. We know this thanks to the Washington Post, which managed to do some real reporting by publishing a two-part series on Ukraine’s failed counter offensive. Yep, kudos on that. The bad news? The analysis is shallow and repeats many of the false claims made by Ukrainians officials. That’s why I am here. To help you sort out the bullshit. Put on your hip waders. The bottomline is simple — the war is lost and the task of assigning blame is at hand.
The Washington Post pieces are:
Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine
and
In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls
Let’s start with the “Miscalculations” piece. There is some misdirection and BS in this piece that you need to take into account.
On June 15, in a conference room at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, flanked by top U.S. commanders, sat around a tablewith his Ukrainian counterpart, who was joined by aides from Kyiv. The room was heavy with an air of frustration.
Austin, in his deliberate baritone, asked Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov about Ukraine’s decision–making in the opening days of its long-awaited counteroffensive, pressing him on why his forces weren’t using Western-supplied mine-clearing equipment to enable a larger, mechanized assault, or using smoke to conceal their advances.
Reznikov, a bald, bespectacled lawyer, said Ukraine’s military commanders were the ones making those decisions. But he noted that Ukraine’s armored vehicles were being destroyed by Russian helicopters, drones and artillery with every attempt to advance. Without air support, he said, the only option was to use artillery to shell Russian lines, dismount from the targeted vehicles and proceed on foot. . . .
The meeting in Brussels, less than two weeks into the campaign, illustrates how a counteroffensive born in optimism has failed to deliver its expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory.
The key takeaway from this opening salvo is that the West knew early on that Ukraine’s counter offensive was not going to work. What is shocking, at least in my opinion, is that clowns like Austin and Milley actually believed they had viable chance to breech Russian lines. The failure of Ukraine is a consequence of two things — first, Ukraine had ZERO fixed wing air power available to employ against Russian positions and second, Ukraine was using inexperienced, poorly trained troops.

Reverend Mother, the gig is almost up. Even "Quad D" Denys the Menys has apparently taken some time off to rethink how to rebrand given that there just isn't much grifting left in the ol' Ukraine propaganda business.

Recent Joe Blogs video on YouTube shows that the Russian property sector has been significantly warped over the last three years, by Government subsidized loans and high interest rates otherwise.

There are a growing number of borrowers who are underwater (negative equity - an outstanding mortgage balance for more than the house is worth), who are also spending over 80% of their income paying their mortgage.

They are building a property bubble, that will be hard to sustain if they enter hyperinflation in a year or two.