21992

Your Russian casualty numbers are ridiculous. There has been a lot of excellent Western reporting in detail on how any number of Russian units have been decimated and forced out of action in order to reconstitute themselves.

21993

Wagner head admits problems in Bakhmut:

21994

Right? Everyone could just put him on mute and move on with their lives. He’s got nothing new to say, he’s got no sources or data to support his assertions, and no argument you make is going to change his mind. Just. Move. On.

This is an incredibly useful and informative thread except for these obnoxious periodic eruptions.

21995

I mean, what sources does anyone have at this point? Any source is going to be biased one way, while the conflict is active.

We are all just speculating.

21996
21997

I mean, that is why Russia is fucked. The Ukrainians don’t seem even 1% closer to giving up, and it has been almost an entire year.

21998

I mean Russia is effectively promising them utter dissolution and dislocation / death, so it’s not hard to want to keep fighting. Were Russia to win and conquer Ukraine they’d arrest/kill all the leadership, deport half the population, and forcibly migrate ethnic Russians to take over the abandoned and empty land and towns. The Russian goal is the elimination of Ukrainian ethnicity and cultural identity.

21999

The UK MoD is a good source in short daily summarized format. ISW issues a report each day and their statements are cited. For example:

Sources are cited at the bottom of this link.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be 100% accurate. But they’ve attributed their sources when they make their analysis. That’s different than just asserting a claim.

22000

I guess.

It is just more paperwork without adding much extra “truth” to it. 90% of those sources are telegram messages.

If you consider tweets or other social media posts as 100% true sources, I guess that works.

22001

They source a Telegram channel when they are talking about chatter on said Telegram channel, yeah. It should by noted that the Rybar channel mentioned works hand-in-hand with the Russian government.

But when not talking about what Russians are saying, they source news articles, statements from Iranian government officials, etc. The claim about the aircraft deliveries are sourced to:

22002
22003

What I am getting at, is that if, as you said, Janster would “post his sources” they would just be assailed as being “biased” or “inaccurate” when there really is not much a standard of accuracy when we are viewing an active conflict. The fog of war is real and exists. The true statement, is that we are all making our best guesses, based on the information we have that is available. That information is going to be biased no matter the source.

That is not to say it isn’t worth criticizing some ideas, sources or thoughts, but the outright hostility towards a marginally opposed viewpoint is jarring.

22004

It’s not the viewpoint that engenders the hostility. But enough of the discussion, it’s been hashed out already.

22005

At this point, I’m just looking for a source that actually says what is claimed, regardless of the trustworthiness.

22006

I want to be clear here, I am NOT posting my own numbers, I’m posting what pro-Russian bloggers site, people who are dubious at best, but they have their own sources and cite them.

As for artillery ammo…I think Perun has the best take on it, Estonian intelligence put it at 1 million rounds produced a year with 700k refurbished rounds…

That’s actually a low number and they won’t be able to sustain their rate of fire with that btw…
Others say they produce 3,4 million rounds a year, they still can’t sustain 50k shells/day with that…but running out of ammo…nope.

Casualties for Russia is by the other side estimated at 13k in december I think or so, but ofcourse if you add Luhansk and Donbas into that, you might get closer to 80k…but they are not Russian soldiers …they are cannon fodder.

Personally, I don’t think the number is that low, I really don’t hope so, they’ve lost a lot of vehicles, but Ukraine sites 3000+ tanks killed, but the documented number is around 1500 now?

So there is a discrepancy here…and thus, I think the real story of the war is hidden in the fog and I worry whats in that fog for Ukraine.

22007

Ah yes, pre-invasion assessment from the ISW

We therefore currently forecast that:

  • Russia will not conduct a full mechanized invasion to conquer all of Ukraine this winter (unchanged).
  • Russian mechanized forces will overtly deploy into occupied Donbas on a large scale by mid-February (increased likelihood).
  • Russia may launch an air and missile campaign throughout unoccupied Ukraine in conjunction with an overt deployment into occupied Donbas (newly identified course of action).
  • Russia may conduct limited ground incursions north and west from occupied Donbas and/or north from Crimea.

I mean, they were completely wrong. Putin did do a full scale mechanized invasion to conquer all of Ukraine.

What I am saying is, we don’t know what we don’t know, and while it is fine to criticize people’s predictions and sources to a point, there is a hell of a lot we don’t know, and anything anyone is saying now could look completely wrong in 12, or even 6 months.

22008

Of course! But that’s why sources and analysis of how claims might be true are what actually contributes to a discussion. Flat assertions don’t. Which is where the frustration on my part comes in.

Russia is sending a million men to the front by winter 2022. Great! How are they doing that? How are they supplying them, given their existing problems in that area? That sort of thing.

22009

I don’t care if someone is wrong, or doesn’t have an exact answer, or just gives an opinion. That’s fine.

What bugs me is saying “X is true” and then pointing to a source that said “We don’t know that X isn’t true.”

22010

I’m not much of a gifer, but if I was, this is where I’d put a gif from that song “Let it go” from that one movie.

22011

There’s a huge difference between a clearly labelled forecast and a statement about facts on the ground. A source getting a forecast wrong doesn’t really call into question the factual reporting of that source.

Now ISW are largely going off OSI and have their own biases, so it’s not like they (or any similar source) is a perfect view into what is going on in the war, but I’m not aware of anything they’ve reported that turned out to be just nonsense.