I remember when the “counteroffensive” smacked against the Surovikin Line, and Russia MoD posted some numbers for casualties. A navalnite lib I know (from waaaay back) mocked it, smugly asserting that the ratio was greater than the one at Omdurman.
But I guess this 7:1 idea is fine by them
Not really. The relevant metric is “combat power”. If the attackers out number the defenders or if the attackers have more big guns and more ammo than the defenders then the casualty ratio can be much worse for the defenders.
Russia likely both outnumbered the Ukrainians in the sector and even the Ukrainian side described Russia as having a 5-10x artillery advantage, with Russia saying 10x.
Under those conditions the actually observed historical casualty exchange ratios in modern battles would suggest significantly worse casualties for the Ukrainians despite being the defenders. Possibly even much worse casualties with some battles from the US experience in WW2 and Korea said that with sufficient “combat power” they documented even a 5:1 advantage for the attackers.
Most battles see defenders and attackers taking roughly equal casualties in fact.
Part of the reason for this is that basically defense isn’t a static thing. Defending a place actually involves going on the attack as well. You don’t just sit there and wait for the enemy to slowly roll you up, you have to hit back to disrupt his plan. Defending in modern war actually involves a lot of attacking.
Also the attacking force has the initiative. They can choose where they want to attack, from where they want to attack, and when. The defender is forced into a more reactive role.
Given Russias large combat power advantage and given that Russia had the initiative and so was able to partially siege and take its time with the attack to maximize strategic advantage, and given in the end it became a disorganized rout, actually you’d expect Ukraines losses to be probably worse and possibly a lot worse.
No, being dug in in a battle where enemy have significant artillery advantage can cause 7 to 1 but the 7 is lost by defenders. Compare for example with US battles on the Pacific, where Japanese were heavily dug but still took many times the losses of attackers despite the attackers using infantry pretty actively and aggressively too.
These reports of losses in Ukraine, even some outlets admitting defeat, makes me wonder if this was the reason why that display in the library was set up.
Very likely, they’re desperately trying to reignite support that the war enjoyed in the first few months. The problem with emotional manipulation of this sort is that most people can only stay emotionally invested in a particular topic for so long because it’s exhausting. Eventually, people just grow numb and even if they still support your cause, they’re no longer fervent about it. On top of that, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the writing is on the wall, and people are now able to engage with the subject more rationally precisely because they’re emotionally exhausted.
I honestly can’t tell if the student body is receptive to this anymore, I know I’m not. This definitely feels like a desperate attempt to keep support up but at the end of the day it doesn’t seem to be as effective anymore, at least to me. People don’t linger around the display and when Ukraine is brought up in my classes people don’t get super feral over it either, at worst they’re still annoying about it but not in the “send weapons and troops” way. I do wonder if Canada will be desperate enough to start drafting considering how leadership acts towards Zelensky and Ukraine in general, they just won’t let up.
My impression is also that public support is drying up. One visible indicator is Ukraine flags that were plastered everywhere quietly disappearing. My anecdotal experience is talking to people at parks when I go out to do photography. At first I was kind of reluctant to talk to random people because I assumed my Russian accent could lead to some unpleasantness. But I was surprised to discover that pretty much everyone I’ve talked to was pretty upset with Canada being involved in this. General mood seems to be that people think the government should be focusing addressing domestic problems such as cost of living, housing, etc. Nobody understands why we should be sending billions to Ukraine while our own standard of living keeps declining. People are starting to connect the cost of the war with their own material conditions.
I do think that Freeland is very personally invested in the whole project, and will try to do whatever is in her power to keep this going. However, I simply don’t see how this thing can keep going for much longer. Importantly, US is clearly losing interest in Ukraine now, and it’s simply not realistic that the war can keep going without them. Trying to institute a draft would be incredibly unpopular, and there’s no chance they could push that through to make any difference.
Marx said eventually the contradictions of capitalism will cause it to collapse on itself. Later on in life he agreed with revolutionaries, of the Lenin ilk, that perhaps it won’t collapse on its own and direct intervention has to happen. He might have just been wrong about the timing and it might have taken an extra hundred years. We see that the liberal foreign policy has created a checkmate.
How can you claim Ukraine is this horrific tragedy when it’s significantly tamer than in Palestine where a genocide is going on and the government is telling people to relax that it’s not that bad? How can they rally the normie liberal to really care about Ukraine again without making Israel look bad? If anything the US might just throw Kyiv/Kiev under bus to save Tel-Aviv.
I get what you mean, but that first line is a bit silly in the sense that Lenin was 13 at the time of Marx’s death lol.
I think the way Marx should be understood is that there isn’t a way capitalism can remain stable in the long term, contradictions will lead invariably to crises. Not that he can predict the future exactly how that unfolds. It’s like looking at a house built on a cliff prone to mudslides and predicting that shit’s gonna collapse eventually
It loosely reminds me of the Foundation Sci Fi series. In the novel, a Mathematician creates a new field he calls psychohistory, basically a mathematics of sociology, vaguely dialectic materialism. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations, and the first thing he sees is the inevitable collapse of empire.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I’m reading the Foundation now (some prequels and in 6th book now) and while at first it was deep disappointment that the Seldon plan was not only just the second imperium, but achieved by the mind control and mentalist ubermensch ruling the galaxy (got a real good heads up how stellarly would that work in 5th book), but with the introduction of Gaia it turned out to be incredibly hilarious.
Gaia is basically utopian communism, sustainable, classless, moneyless society, which furthermore is centrally planned and follow literal democratic centralism (or at least it works like that because group consciousness). But seen by the lib eye, “human nature” problem which no liberalism ever can overcome even in speculation, is eliminated by being group consciousness. Even funnier, arguments used against Gaia by Trevize and some other people mirror arguments used by liberals against communism. If i didn’t know Asimov was ultimately a lib and anticomunist i would thought it was a bait.
Also, never allow mathematicians to plan the future.
gee, i thought Ukraine was winning and was on the offensive this whole time
The 7:1 K/D ratio is from…
“The losses of Russians around Avdiivka are colossal. My colleagues and I did the calculations and pulled up our archival records from the beginning of the year,” said Dmitry Likhovy, Ukrainian military spokesman.
emphasis mine
~https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lost-thousands-of-personnel-and-400-tanks-in-avdiivka-2024
Ukrainian forces pulled out, they haven’t counted bodies, this is a pretty wild number. I wonder what time frame they’re using for their “calculations” and just how much of the fighting in areas around Avdiivka were being included in the numbers?
Ukraine just making up numbers is a well known phenomenon at this point, what’s amusing here is that western media keeps taking them at face value.
