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Comment by JoachimS | Hacker News Reader

Russia is in fact loosing more than 1000 people per day. It has for many months.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-highest-monthly-losses-ukrai...

They also loose equipment at a staggering rate. From the start of the invasion 2022 until end of July, they have lost more than 570 000 soldiers, 8000 tanks and 16000 artillery systems.

Oh and also 38 war ships and one submarine - against a country that didn't have a navy at the start of the invasion. Drones is ammunition and is used in air, land and sea.

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Those are Ukraine numbers, so there is double counting, propaganda, and other such reasons to take some salt with them. Different countries have different estimates but they publish them less often. Those numbers are the best we have, and give a similar magnitude to other estimates but they are also higher than others.

Of course there are also things that nobody can see and there is reason to believe Russia is intentionally not counting some thing.

On the other hand we also have reason to believe Russia is recruiting about 1000 men per day, and the number of troops they have is not increasing. So while the numbers above are suspect they cannot be too far off.

Those are Ukraine numbers, but they are repeatedly confirmed by ISW and others. There are of course errors, uncertainties. But they seem not to be inflated. Often they instead seem to be somewhat conservative compared to other sources.

My point is mainly that "drone only does something of value 1/4 of the time, rest of them are lost uselessly" isn't a bad statistic. Even if it took 10 drones to significantly wound an infantryman, or 100 to blow up a tank, that would be still a very good use of them.

1000 a week seems more in line with the numbers I have seen

If that was the case the Russian army in Ukraine would be growing quickly. We know that Russia recruits around 1000 people per day and their army stays virtually the same size. That pretty much proves that the casualties are close to 1000 per day.

How do you know this?

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