So what are Russian casualties, really?

Warring nations almost always "fudge" some of the data, but in the Ukrainian war, the gap between official and Ukrainian numbers seems to be huge.  That noted, I'm starting to believe the Ukrainian numbers without much reservation.  For starters, they're not that far off from those produced by NATO, and going further, look at this article about a doctor who worked on Russian casualties before escaping to freedom.  More or less, soldiers were coming to his hospital in Belarus (there does not appear to have been a good set of field hospitals in the north of Ukraine) with wounds that had turned gangrenous.

In other words, wound care in the Russian army is errily reminiscent of the conditions found before Florence Nightingale cleaned things up....in the Crimean War nearly 170 years ago.  So I suspect that the Ukrainian numbers, while probably still a bit optimistic, might have more truth in them than any Russian mother would want to know.

Side note; Dutch open source investigators Oryx have apparently verified that about 7500 Russian heavy armored vehicles (tanks, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery) have been destroyed or captured.  The Ukrainian numbers are similar, about 10,000.  

Long and short of it is that Russian losses in their war against Ukraine, when scaled for population, are approaching the impact of the Korean and Vietnam Wars on the U.S.....combined.  In terms of deaths and losses per month. they're approaching U.S. losses in World War Two.  And it's only going to get worse as more and more of their irreplaceable systems get used and destroyed.  Estimated Russian losses per day have risen from ~100-200/day to about 400-500/day.  

I can only pray that the angry grieving mothers and widows find the information that enables them to take out the FSB (the new KGB) for good when this is all done.

A good candidate for "de-nazification"

Putin ally Ramzan Kadyrov argues that Ukrainian cities ought to be erased from the face of the earth.  Sounds like Kadyrov more or less wants Auschwitz without the trouble of actually setting up the death camps, so if Putin really wants to "de-Nazify" any area, maybe start with Kadyrov's dacha?  Just sayin'. 

Also praying that Putin retreats to his bunker with his Walther PPK and does some target practice on his dental work like his role model did.  Hopefully Kabaeva has the good sense to stay in Switzerland while he does this.

And it starts...

I've been noting for a while that it's only a matter of time before a "trans" person on a women's sports team got someone hurt, and people responded negatively, and now it's happened. A "trans woman" on the girls' volleyball team from one school spiked the ball so hard, another girl got a concussion.  

Thankfully the response is not what I've predicted yet--the trans person getting severely beaten or worse--but the school with the girl with the concussion is pulling out of competition with the school which allows "trans" participation.  When men have all kinds of advantages-height, skull thickness, bone density, strength, bone structure, etc.--it is simply wrong to subject girls' teams to male participation.  Next time, the response might not be so gentle.

Paging speechwriters in Moscow....

General Sergey Surovikin argues that Russia's goal is a friendly Ukraine that is independent of the west, and that the Russian method is to "protect each soldier and methodically grind the opposing army."

In other words, Russia will methodically kill and maim as many Ukrainians as possible, and somehow they think that the Ukrainians that survive that are going to love them for that, as well as for taking 20% 18% whatever they can get of Ukraine, including the main industrial heartland of the country.

Honestly, what color is the sun on these peoples' planet?  Are there no people who will tell them "This is not exactly what Dale Carnegie was recommending for making friends and influencing people!" ?  

Putin delenda est!

Update: Gen. Surovikin looks a LOT like King Kong Bundy!

Now this is scary

The case of the Russian SU-34 that crashed into an apartment building in Yeysk  should be troubling to Russia for many reasons.  For starters, you've got the possibility that Ukrainians took it out, or worse yet, it's an example of poor maintenance leading to disaster.

But if you look at the map, and contemplate the reality that a plane without power cannot steer, you come to an even scarier issue; the Russians may have been taking off towards the city with suspect maintenance.  Take a look at the map; you can see the SU-34s based there in the satellite view, and they should be taking off to the west.  The city is right in the flight path to the east, however, so it would be a remarkable "bank" for a stricken aircraft to take off properly and yet end up in Yeysk itself.

Whether it's partisans in the fields with Stingers, or just disregard for their hosts, the Russian Air Force has some huge issues here.

You know, they're right in a way

Austria is suing the EU because the EU, trying desperately to salvage their "green" agenda, has declared natural gas and nuclear power to be renewables. Now of course, there's a given amount of natural gas in the earth, a given amount of uranium in the earth, and once the economically recoverable reserves are gone, they're gone.  So in a way, the Austrians are right--the EU is playing games to salvage their so-called "green" agenda.  Apart from methane from garbage dumps and decay of things like agricultural wastes, natural gas isn't renewable, and neither is uranium.  You can increase the capabilities of the latter through breeder reactors and such, but and the end of the day, when it's lead, it's gone.

Now the obvious question, then, is whether, even apart from the question of whether natural gas and nuclear qualify as renewables, we can achieve a renewable economy in the near future.  In that light, we need to remember the sun goes down at dusk, and the wind generally dies down at that point as well.  So without large energy storage devices, "clean energy" is at an impasse--at least until we get breeder reactors to work without a risk of proliferation, fusion, and massive battery banks.

That noted, let's consider that hypothetical "green" future.  We would have, since the sun goes down at night, and since the wind dies down during the day, more or less two systems that, if they kept going 24-7, would theoretically be able to power the whole system.  Then, since neither system works at dawn or dusk, peak power usage times, you've got a third system--renewable or otherwise--that is fully capable of carrying peak load.

In other words, you are paying for three systems (all of which could be far more expensive than the one they've got now) that almost do the job of one, and that simply doesn't pass any ROI test--and accordingly, Germany's partial implementation of the same has resulted in far higher electric bills than they ought to have.

Really, what needs to happen is what I remember from a quarter century ago; manmade carbon dioxide emissions and methane use needs to be "scored" vs. natural emissions of carbon dioxide and methane with a sober eye--as in "if manmade emissions are only a small portion of natural, let's not sweat it so much".  There will come days, most likely, when we no longer have sufficient fossil fuels to supply our needs, and we'll need to have something else in store.  That day, however, is not tomorrow.

Let's walk this through

The usual hypothesis for the destruction of a portion of the bridge to Crimea is that Ukraine had something to do with it, but upon looking at the evidence, I'm not so sure.  For starters, a truck bomb being driven by those who wished to destroy things is not the general pattern of non-Islamic militants.  To continue, the truck was westbound and came from Russia, was in the right lane (the worst lane to cause damage to the bridges), and the damage was to the road rather than the vital rail line for the most part.  Moreover, the truck was far enough away from other vehicles that only three people were killed, and with little time to investigate, the Kremlin has announced they know who the suspects are.  

Going further, the "retaliatory" cruise missile strike launched 84 cruise missiles, many of them at residential areas and even embassies, but so far only ten people have been killed, and Ukraine reports that they learned of the attacks being planned on October 2 & 3.  Preparation for attacks would seem to give us some hint of why so few people were killed.

I can't absolutely prove it, but this looks like classic Kremlin misdirection and misinformation to justify a new series of war crimes.  If it were a Ukrainian act instead of a Russian, the truck would have been eastbound, would have been near a Russian troop transport when it detonated (if possible) , and would have been aimed to take out the rail line, too.

Evidence suggests that the FSB (KGB) did this and murdered three innocents in the process, followed by the murders of other innocents in the pre-planned cruise missile strikes.

So they didn't teach this at Russia's military academies?

This little bit from the Ukrainian Army details a bit of how the Ukrainian Army quickly forced a Russian retreat in Kharkiv Oblast.  More or less, it's the same kind of blitzkrieg that the Germans inflicted on the Russians at Tannenberg in 1914, and again on the Soviet Union in World War Two.  It's also about the same tactics that Russia's army used to plague Austria-Hungary in World War One.

Pretty ominous that the military academies of Russia don't appear to be teaching this.  Even more ominously, the new conscripts for Russia's army are being issued summer uniforms.  Haven't they ever read Tolstoy?

Snicker

The Russian Army is still using the foot wraps that Leo Tolstoy described being used...in Russia's war against Napoleon over two centuries ago.  Apparently the concept of "socks" has not yet been introduced there.  In other great news of modern technology, apparently Russian conscripts are being issued the 1891-designed Mosin-Nagant, apparently because they don't have enough Kalishnikov variants anymore.

Looks like if we want to help Ukraine, we're going to have to break out the strategic reserves of the 30-40 Krag, or perhaps (for the British) the .303 Enfield, and maybe some of the old steel bucket helmets from WW1.

New logo for Tesla?

....perhaps ought to be a foot stepping in a noxious pile of manure, as Elon Musk has apparently enraged many Ukrainians by suggesting that a good "peace plan" ought to include ceding territory to Russia because it's unlikely that Ukraine could defeat Russia in total war.

Well, yes, but as those who study history have noted, the smaller nation of "Germany" decidedly defeated Russia in WW1, the smaller nation of the "United States" defeated Great Britain in her war of independence, Scotland at times took it to England, Russia defeated a monstrously more powerful French army in the time of Napoleon, Israel defeated the Greeks in the Maccabean Wars, Ethiopia defeated Mussolini's Italy, Albania defeated Mussolini's Italy.....

I don't guess that he's reading this, but in case he is:  Elon, you're a great miner of government subsidies to make yourself one of the richest men on earth, and you've done well at providing Starlink to help the Ukrainian resistance to the Nazi-esque Putin regime, but maybe bone up on some history before you tweet on it?