U.S. intelligence estimates that 7k Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine

Yeah, made worse by the fact the submitter is obviously the "author" and presumably, ads beneficiary of TFA.

The submission was flagged for a while and rightfully so, maybe the link should be changed to the one you provided...

Seriously. I feel like there should be some rule that any link to a news story should be a link to a major trustworthy news organization. When I see these other domains I immediately assume fake news.

But now I'm stuck behind a paywall. Do I have to pay for a NYT subscription to read hackernews now?

Probably somewhat more than half are for support. The support troops are also at risk, especially the ones driving trucks on the roads in the north. They are valuable (especially tanker trucks) soft targets on a very long supply line and are constrained to traveling on roads.

The Russian army is made up of Battalion Tactical Groups[1]. They have ~170 per Wikipedia, ~160 per [3]. They staged ~120 for the attack on Ukraine[2], all of which are now committed to battle (no reserves left). Per Wikipedia, a BTG is 600-800 combat troops (probably 800 when in full strength, probably closer to 700 in actual strength because 100% strength is impossible). This would imply ~80,000-90,000 combat troops.

Ukraine claims that they have rendered 31 BTGs "combat ineffective" or have been destroyed[4] - ~30% of the Russian force in Ukraine.

If I were a Russian general responsible for defending the Russian homeland, I would be sweating really hard over the BTG math... 160 - 120 = 40 BTG (actually less since several BTG are deployed to Syria, Georgia, etc.) to defend all of Russia. No wonder Xi Jinping is grinning like a shark in the pictures with Putin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_tactical_group

[2] https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1011404/putin-has-co...

[3] https://pledgetimes.com/ukraine-russian-commanders-received-...

[4] https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1502403764787032070...

From what I understand it’s 150,000 troops which will include combat infantry and support personnel. You need a lot of support personnel to supply infantry effectively. We’re talking cooks, field hospital staff, people trained to be truck drivers, armorers, operations personnel, radio operators, you name it. It’s noteworthy that it appears (smartly) that the Ukrainians are ambushing and taking out supply convoys and units which are way less capable of fighting, but are nonetheless critical.

What I’ve seen is Russia lacking in the ability to conduct combined arms operations. Like say you want to take some piece of geography. You’d want to have close air support, artillery being directed toward enemy positions, etc. and it seems that this is just not happening.

When the United States invaded Iraq, according to Wikipedia it was with 177,000 with 45,000 from the United Kingdom [1].

And this was for a country that was all but inept against American forces, and a local population that certainly didn’t care for Saddam.

You could also probably draw up comparisons equipment-wise with the US and Russia now, except give the Iraqis missiles used in war in 2022, take away combined arms, and instead of having an at least somewhat welcoming population you have one that’s armed to the teeth and hates you and is getting fed intel on your every position.

Russia assumed they’d be able to decapitate the country before anyone knew what to do, but then that didn’t happen, and now they don’t have enough troops without conscripting Russians and sending them to Ukraine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq?wprov=sf...

I don't think that they stuffed an additional 150k of support staff right next to the soldiers, so I guess they include them in the soldier count usually.

As far as I know, the distinction of who is "fighting" and who isn't, is dubious at best. Also, all the air force pilots and personnel aren't accounted for in that count because they are stationed elsewhere.

I read somewhere that the BTGs in Transnistria have 1500 men and out of that 400 support. Seems reasonable to extrapolate that.

Russia took out Ukraine’s cell towers, which broke their own encrypted comms. They then switched to radio but the Ukrainians started flooding the channels with music. So now they’re on unencrypted personal phones.

Here's the original sentence (NYT article) this was butchered from:

> The conservative side of the estimate, at more than 7,000 Russian troop deaths, is greater than the number of American troops killed over 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

They managed to change which military, the current war and the comparison wars in one bad edit.

> And is this the same US intelligence that said Iraq has WMDs?

I heard an interesting explanation for that - intelligence agencies don't deal well with adversaries that lie to themselves. Allegedly they had captured communication of Saddam bragging to his inner circle that his WMDs are ready and will be used soon ... but he didn't actually have any. Oops.

Same with overestimating Russian ability to wage war - when you capture communication that says "we have 30 planes ready" it is hard to know that 10 of those are fictional and 10 are broken because people routinely lie to their bosses.

But it might be bunch of excuses, who knows.

After almost 20 years we can assume it's not the same intelligence.

> And is this the same US intelligence that said Iraq has WMDs?

To be fair, it's the same US intelligence that correctly predicted pretty much every move Putin made leading up to the invasion.

It is impossible to compare these situations. World War II was an entirely different kind of war and its horror had an even greater order of magnitude.

Hard to tell that to the people on the ground, of course.