‘Russian forces have an unorthodox view of acceptable levels of military losses, with a willingness to expend troops and equipment to make even small gains on the battlefield.’

Unorthodox is not the word I would choose. Perhaps a better one would be ‘un-western’ or ‘unAmerican.’ Their strategy seems to be pretty standard Russian battle doctrine. The Red Army would expend vast amounts of blood and armor for small gains in WW2 (which worked, by the way, the 3rd Reich’s advance was stopped by a self-sacrificing bulwark of peasant soldiers). Before that, the Russian Empire would also often suffer massive casualties even in victory.

The tone of the article is almost one of ‘what do you want from us, we blew up a lot of troops, but they just keep coming. That’s so unreasonable.’ It seems whiny, like the Russian willingness to feed themselves into the grinder is just terribly inconvenient.

Given what the western military leaders know, maybe we should adapt our strategies accordingly.