[absalom01]

The Mail has been slavishly reporting every piece of Ukrainian propaganda from the beginning.

Too late to change at this point I guess.

[Zhang Fei]

[The Mail has been slavishly reporting every piece of Ukrainian propaganda from the beginning.

Too late to change at this point I guess.]

---

It’s been reporting propaganda from both sides, including casualty numbers from the Russians. They claim they lost 500 men killed in 7 days. We lost 174 men over 6 weeks during Iraqi Freedom. They’re not off to a good start, even if they’re not bogged down.

Assuming official Russian casualties are true - 500 in 1 week - 500 is 1/2 the average Russian KIA in Afghanistan for an entire year. I suspect Putin is going to run into serious problems taking casualty numbers at ~25x its reported Afghan War rate per week with half the Russian population that it had during the Afghan campaign. All those single son families are gonna be screaming bloody murder.

When you compare Afghanistan to Vietnam, it’s remarkable how much less punishment in body count terms the Russians were able to take before hitting their uncle point. The official Russian KIA number in Afghanistan was 13,000 over about 10 years, which is roughly 1/5 the US number in Vietnam. When you think about the coercive powers of the totalitarian Soviet state vs the anything goes milieu of 60’s and 70’s America - it’s amazing the US hung in there so long.