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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

Can someone Russian explain what on earth they are thinking? Russia appears to have 10x the casualties as Ukraine, soldiers that doesn't really want to fight, and are currently losing. Yet the leaders think it is a good idea to keep the war going? To me it seems that with the material Ukraine is receiving from the West they will easily retake all territory Russia has occupied.

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> what on earth they are thinking

Honestly, we don't know either.

It looks like panic? A last resort (before nuclear, god forbid)? An agony? Rejection of reality? Some kind anger/bargain, in terms of stages of grief?

This whimsical child plays with our lives and lives of Ukrainians, I've never been so ashamed to share a country with him.

>Russia appears to have 10x the casualties as Ukraine

Reliable source? That isn't what I read anywhere from not-so-partial sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

Officials say there are close to 6k dead. Mobilization wants 300k recruits. This doesn't add up at all.

Not sure about 10x casualties as Ukraine, but I'm sure it's 10x of what they're saying

Recruiting 300k and number of dead soldiers are not always correlate. It's amount of land to control and amount of soldiers required is in correlation. RF seems underestimate amount of soldiers need to control and protect land, they dropped lot of land and reduced length border to protect.

I like how Russian forces have various estimates, but for Ukrainian forces we take Ukraine data for granted, while the truth is both countries are highly likely downplaying their losses, same as both of their dictators are same corrupted thieves as proven in Pandora Papers last year when they were appearing together in all articles. Can't believe someone believes any data coming from these 3rd world countries.

Of course both sides have an interest in downplaying their losses, and exaggerating their victories. Do you think that reporters and conflict analysts aren't perfectly aware of this ancient fact?

Where are then US, UK and other countries estimates about Ukraine losses? Because they certainly aren't in linked Wikipedia article and all I can find in Google is just Ukrainian propaganda and few articles from Russian claims (which are on opposite side of spectrum, not thta those ridiculous US estimates would not be propaganda as well).

> all I can find in Google is just Ukrainian propaganda

There is no use discussing it if any results that contradict you are "propaganda"

> all I can find in Google is just Ukrainian propaganda and few articles from Russian claims

As I said all I can find for Ukrainian losses is Ukrainian propaganda straight from Ukrainian gov or Russian propaganda from Russian gov. I wanna filter out both of these extremes and see some reasonable numbers since any data from RU/UA are clearly completely unrealistic for their own purposes.

"Information" spread by Ukrainian gov ais well known propaganda and not "information", there is no point to call them otherwise.

There is really no use of discussing it if you can't provide independent estimates by UK, US or even better some more neutral observers like China, India, etc.

Just like we're in a bubble that says "haha Russia is losing, so naive", they're in a bubble that says "haha Russia is greatest army, winning everywhere where those dirty Americans aren't cheating. Ukraine is shelling its own villages for PR".

Edit: except their bubble seems a lot harder.

Gotta try to save face. Russians will continue to support their government in Ukraine if they believe it is still doing well in Ukraine.

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