Posted on 08/26/2015 3:33:57 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Russian president Vladimir Putin has decreed that all Russian casualties “in peacetime” be a state secret. In addition to criminal charges arising from divulging state secrets, families risk losing pensions and lump-sum payments if they reveal that their sons were killed in Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers’ associations have been branded “foreign agents” for collecting data on Russian casualties. Dissident Boris Nemtsov was murdered shortly before completing his study of Russian casualties in Ukraine. Russian civil rights organizations, working against the fog of official resistance, could confirm only several hundred battlefield deaths.
Business Life (Delovaya Zhizn) reports on markets, finance, entrepreneurship, finance, and leisure, scarcely an outlet for sensational information. Its innocuously entitled “Increases in Pay for Military in 2015,” however, reveals what appear to be official figures on the number of Russian soldiers killed or made invalids “in eastern Ukraine.” Russian censors quickly removed the offending material but not before it had been webcached by the Ukrainian journal Novy Region (New Region). Here is the “top secret” material the censors removed (my translation):
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
"The Delovaya zhizn inadvertent (or deliberate?) revelation of more than two thousand combat deaths in east Ukraine not only destroys the Putin myth of a small number of deaths of Russian patriots defending Russians in Ukraine from neo-Nazi extremists but also demolishes Putin’s cover story that no “active” member of the Russian armed forces is or has been in Ukraine. According to Putin, if there are Russian fighters in Ukraine, they had resigned and gone as volunteers. Note that contract fighters are paid for each day in the combat zone. In Russian military jargon, a contract soldier (kontraktnik) contracts to serve a specific period of time in the military (usually three years) in return for compensation and other benefits. The clause on payment for contract soldiers blows a huge hole through the cover story."
Whoever posted that is marching to Siberia right about now, if not dead of Polonium poisoning.
Taking the slow train to Samarkand...
The fact that both sides have used, and continue to use heavy artillery, tank fire, rockets, etc. means many soldiers are not merely "wounded," but dismembered, disemboweled, horrifically burned, blinded, etc. Lack of prompt medical care, evacuation turns the "Golden Hour" into approx. 8-24 hours in some cases. Blood loss, infection, septicemia, all lead to unnecessary loss of limbs or death.
Many of the WIA face months if not years of rehabilitative medicine. Prothesis. Pain. PTSD. And of course, all this can lead to suicide rates increasing...
This is to show the Russian People that their sons were sacrificed for the glory of Putin. But the people have lost faith in Putin, because look what the war has cost the Russian people food shortages in St. Petersburg. There are other problems, the devaluing of he Russian ruble, Western businesses are being forced out of Russia. Companies like John Deere, Case/International and New Holland have invested heavily in developing assembly factories in Russia for the production of combines for the harvesting of grain. Just watch Putin will be forced out of power soon enough. the Russian people when they starve the Politburo gets changed!
In the early days of the war, the Ukrainians were evacuating the WIA with helicopters. But use of the Ukr AF was banned under the Minsk “peace” deal. That is just one of many concessions forced on them by the EU.
Putin will hand out the medals once the conflict is frozen. This “leak” is a signal that the Russian army KIA will be officially acknowledged at a later date, IMO.
Putin’s adventurism does cost, but his lies have yet to matter.
Interestingly, our local Putinist boot licking liars are no were to be found when they are outed. Maybe I should ping them?
Those are staggering figures.
What are the official Ukrainian casualties.
The USSR won against the Germans, but they did so with a population that was roughly 3x as large, and the Germans had to man two fronts. In a conventional war where the numbers are not to their advantage, the Russians have some real problems, albeit they would inflict heavy casualties on their enemy.
I think Kursk was the only battle where the Germans took higher losses than the Russians. Had the Russians decided to press on through to the English channel in 1945, they would have been quickly held in place, decimated from the air, and then 1946 would have seen them pushed all the way back to Russia, with defeat in 1947 (forgetting the A-bomb). The invasion of Japan would have been shelved, and those islands would have been starved out, bombed flat, and received the combined attention of nearly 100% of the U.S., British, and French fleets attention. Perhaps the Nationalist Chinese could have finally made some gains.
Those are significant numbers of Russian dead in Ukraine, yet they are nothing compared to the attrition of all out war between two modern armies with the gloves off. That said, large areas require vast amounts of munitions and the very expensive modern munitions will quickly become heavily rationed in an all out war. I think day 10 of an all out conventional war in Europe would be getting fought mainly with rifles and grenades.
For two centuries the Russian Army could barely fight its way out of a wet paper bag, from Napoleon to the Kaiser, from Crimea to Afghanistan, against the British, Germans, French, Turks and Japanese the Russian Army proved itself to be a hopelessly incapable fighting force, with little training and discipline, dreadful logistics, hopeless tactics and appalling leadership.
This was the same up until about 1942 when the Russian Army was finally able to turn around its dreadful losses and territory and force back a relatively small German Army that never should have been allowed to get as far as it got.
Three years later the Russians finally won a war.
So what was the magic ingredient that finally allowed the Russian Army to win its first, and only, victory in two centuries?
Simple, this time the logistics and supplying of the Russian Army was largely taken out of the hands of incompetent and corrupt Russian officers, industrialists and politicians and given to a bunch of people with the ability to get things done; the Americans.
The US supplied 15 million boots to the Red Army (no matter how many soldiers you have they aren’t much use to you if their feet have fallen off due to frostbite), tens of thousands of superb quality trucks, thousands of miles of railway tracks and hundreds of train locomotives as well as millions of tons of food, oil, steel and other supplies.
Give the Red Army that and fight Germany on two fronts and eventually the Red Army was, finally, able to beat the Nazis. The spigot got turned off in 1945 and after that the Russians weren’t going anywhere.
Yup with out the US supplies they would have been toast.
And of thousands of Merchant Marines who died at sea delivering cargo on the Murmansk run. Other routes as well. Aircraft flown to Alaska and flown to Russia by Russian pilots. List goes on and on. No nation in world history has been able to build sea/air bridges like America.
The figures are all over the map.
And both sides are alleged to using mobile crematoriums. Thus destroying the evidence (bodies) that would otherwise, probably be noted/recorded.
Vlad,like his hero and mentor (Uncle Joe),will die quietly in his bed despite having been a mass murdering psychopath.
Thanks elhombrelibre.
Without much fanfare, Ukrainians are inflicting Afghan-scale casualties on the Russians. And the Russians are pros, unlike their draftee counterparts during the Afghan conflict. Not huge numbers, but numbers that will sting, given that families are much smaller than they used to be.
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