Bijou Drains
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TW – “You’ve never asked for my source on casualties. It’s Andrei Martyanov”
So your figures are based on the work of a Russian living in the US. So, just like you, his figures (if they concur with you, and I can’t see anywhere on line actually stating a figure of deaths of Ukrainian troops on any line article, although I am happy to be directed to them) are effectively based on conjecture, rather than direct evidence.
Having read your comments over some time I have noticed that the more you find it a struggle to support your arguments effectively, the more you resort to insult. I am inferring (note the correct use of the word) from your recent post that you must be really struggling to justify your patently ridiculous exaggeration of the Ukrainian death toll.
Your frankly gruesome and blood thirsty glorification of the deaths of fellow workers on both sides of this grubby capitalist dispute does you no favours
According to TW – The Ukrainian Forces are on their last legs, and that they have had 200,000 deaths and very few survivable casualties, but on the other hand they’ve a troop strength of over 1,000,000 troops. (So presumably that makes 800,000 troops available)
On the one hand the Ukrainians overinflated their troop numbers and are unreliable but on the other their troop numbers are greater than the ones that the Ukrainian’s have announced.
On the one hand sources such as the Russian Ministry of Defence and the Moon of Alabama are the source of reliable data, yet his estimates of Ukrainian deaths are much greater than the ones provided by his never revealed “sources” which are reliable and correct.
It looks like TW doesn’t know whether he’s batting or whether he’s fielding
The brilliant “Poor Old Ireland” released by Lindisfarne and writtenby the late great Alan Hull in 1972, is one of the few songs produced through the troubles that gives a perspective that Socialists could concur (The Town That I Loved so Well, is probably another one)
Lyric are:
Poor old Ireland, poor old universe,
Wonder who comes off the worse.
Poor old people mistreating misbelieving,
I think you’ve been cast by a curse.
But I don’t want you to die, I can see all the lies
There’s nothing there that’s new.
But there’s still no need to make blind children bleed,
Even if what you say is true.And meanwhile in the aisles of the churches with style,
They’re singing their songs to the Lord.
And the preacher’s carping that for failure on earth,
Heaven will be your reward.Poor old Ireland tortured by past and
Tarnished by future’s curse
Poor old Ireland, poor old planet,
Poor old universe.Oh Ireland your people mean more than the idols
You seek to set upon earth
And the day that you see that’s the day, that all of your
Sadness and sickness will die.For the enemy you seek to destroy is not the
One who’s causing the pain
He’s disguised himself well with his book and his bell but
Evil is still his name.Poor old Ireland tortured by past and
Tarnished by future’s curse
Poor old Ireland, poor old universe
Wonder who comes off the worse.BD -“That said, it is interesting that suddenly (when it suits you) you are starting to rely on data provided by the Ukrainian side”
TW “So predictable. I was anticipating this very retort. We all know no men, even teenage boys, are allowed to leave Ukraine and that there are countless videos of Ukrainian civilians being dragged off the streets and press-ganged to the front. The Kiev Nazis also have their own version of the volksturm. The figures of men pressed in to military service is one number we can trust.”
Is that the sounds of straws being clutched at???
TW – “The defence minister added: “We have approximately 700,000 in the armed forces and when you add the national guard, police, border guard, we are around a million-strong.”Jul 11, 2022”
Even if you go with the figure of 700,000 (the national guard, the police, border guards are not currently enlisted), your figure of 200,000 deaths is wildly improbable.”
As I have said the tooth the tail ratio of front line troops to logistical tail has a minimum of 1:3 (probably higher) that gives a front line strength of 175,000 front line troops. Add to that a death to serious injury ratio of even 1:2.5 (which is highly unlikely) your 200,000 figure (which you actually said was proabably much higher) would entail another 500,000 seriously wounded. That leaves 700,000 dead or wounded. So given that figure, who the hell are the Russians still Fighting?
That said, it is interesting that suddenly (when it suits you) you are starting to rely on data provided by the Ukrainian side, having trashed their intel and Western Statistics and media throughout this debate. You frequently state that the Ukrainians have been exaggerating their firepower, yet all of a sudden they are accurate?
Has it occurred to you that the Ukrainian Defence Minister might have a vested interest in inflating the figures he announces when he is interviewed in the Times, when the Ukrainian government are busy trying to persuade Western powers to continue to supply them with arms?
Other research through other sources show a different perspective:
Statista.com, whose reputation is reasonable, not great but reasonable, state the following figures:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1296573/russia-ukraine-military-comparison/
Apologies, she was elected on to the UCU Pensions Committee originally and that was on the UCU Left slate.
Calling all Conference Delegates in pre-92… USS National Dispute Committee election
TW – “The figure given by van der Layan was 100,000. Already very high.”
If, as has been claimed, Von der Layen (sic) had confused casualties with deaths, then the figures would probably stack up (approximately 1:4 ratio death to serious injury). Giving a death toll of about 20,000. I’m not saying this is correct, just saying that this was the explanation given.
TW – “Oh, isn’t that charming? Bojo’s brains just figured out people die.”
Just strange that a lot of the ones that die and are connected to the regime seem to be falling out of the 15th floor of high buildings or murdering their family before they die
TW – “Well, that’s easy. First of all, you are comparing apples and oranges. The modern battlefield is nothing like that of WW2. Drones, satellites, guided missiles, jets, helicopters, modern optics and targeting computers have all revolutionised war. It’s the difference between catching a fish based on a hunch or using sonar. Apples and oranges.”
But, unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case at all.
The following is a very robust analyis of probablity of death in battle during the period 1900 to date (carried out using a variety of analytical tools including to statistically analyze the data, including using a linear ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of the logged (base 10) ) by Marcel Arsenault
The researcher’s methodolgy was as follows ” I plotted the predicted average number of battle deaths for three periods: that prior to World War I, the interwar period between 1914 and 1945 (including the World Wars), and the period following World War II. In essence, these are the lines that best fit the observed data, along with 95 percent confidence intervals for those predictions.”
He went on “I plotted the predicted average number of battle deaths for three periods: that prior to World War I, the interwar period between 1914 and 1945 (including the World Wars), and the period following World War II. In essence, these are the lines that best fit the observed data, along with 95 percent confidence intervals for those predictions. While it is possible to see the decline in predicted battle deaths following the end of World War II, there is also a notable increase in battle deaths prior to World War I.”
So if anything (although the change in the statics are small) the lethality of war during battle has possibly declined, rather than increased.
As you say there have been technological advances in terms of weapons of war and the war machines used, however there has been a comensurate advance on means of defence. For example body armour has increased and the survivability rate in tank attack has massively increased. My uncle was a tank driver in the 2nd world war and the fatality rates were phenominal and the chance of death or serious injury were very high (The Sherman tank was nicknamed the Ronson after the cigarette lighter slogan ““A flip and it’s lit”). In comparison the modern tank with advanced armour is far more protected and safe.
Even if you were correct in terms of the lethality of war (which you are not), this still leaves you with problem that given your claim that more than 200,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed, a death to serious injury ratio (even using one based on the American Civil War!!!) means that the claimed 500,000 Ukrainian troops would have been either killed or seriously injured, yet they quite cleary haven’t. The only conclusion that can be made is that your claim of 200,000 deaths is unsupportable.
Looks like there’s a chance of another Union victory to add to the settlement by the Firebrigade’s Union. The UCU have paused action on the University Industrial Action for the next two weeks, following talks with ACAS.
The UCU have said there is progess on restoring pension benefits whilst securing a reduction in employer payments
The USS trustees have stated “The latest information provided by the USS Trustee suggests that the forthcoming 2023 valuation is likely to reveal a high probability of being able to improve benefits and reduce contributions. Should this be confirmed, this would allow for a return to a comparable level of future benefits as existed before the April 2022 changes, as well as achieve a
reduction in costs for members and employers.”As well as that the employers are talking to their members of ending the process of non-voluntary zero hours contracts and it also looks like there is progress on an improved pay offer.
The UCU left (the SWP in a cunning disguise) have been squawking about leadership betrays. The current gen sec was elected on the UCU Left ticket and there solution to the succession of leadership betrayals is, that’s right, you guessed it, better leaders!!!
Death of Marina Yankina – The Russian Investigative Committee and the press service of the Western Military District ‘Fontanka’ have confirmed her death and have started an investigation regarding her mysterious fall.
Seems to be a bit of a spate of high ranking Russians falling out of windows or shooting themselves.
On December 26, Pavel Antonov, the deputy of the Russian Duma died in India after falling out of a hotel window.
The former chief of Russian Ground Forces Aleksey Maslov died in hospital on December 25
Aleksandr Buzakov who served as the head of Russia’s ‘admiralty shipyards’ for a decade died on December 24.
Also
Leonid Shulman, 60, Director of Transport of Gazprom, 30 January 2022
Igor Nosov, 43, CEO of the Far East and Arctic Development Corporation (KRDV) and former Deputy governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, 8 February 2022
Alexander Tyulakov, 61, Deputy General Director of the Unified Settlement Center of Gazprom, 25 February 2022
Vasily Melnikov, 43, CEO and owner of Medstorm, 23 March 2022 Wife and two sons found dead beside him
Vladislav Avayev, 51, Former Vice President of Gazprombank 18 April 2022 Wife and 13-year-old daughter found dead beside him
Sergey Protosenya, 55, Former Deputy Chairman of Novatek.19 April 2022 wife and daughter found dead in their beds with blunt axe wounds and stab wounds
Andrei Krukovsky, 37, General Director of the Estosadok Krasnaya Polyana, a ski resort owned by Gazprom 1 May 2022
Alexander Subbotin, 43, Board member of Lukoil, 8 May 2022
Yuri Voronov, 61, CEO of Astra Shipping, a subcontractor of Gazprom 4 July 2022
Ravil Maganov, 67, Chair of Lukoil, 1 September 2022 (Reportedly hospitalised for heart problems and depression, then “fell out of a window”)
Ivan Pechorin, 39, Director of Aviation of the Russian Far East and Arctic Development Corporation (KRDV). 10 September 2022
Vladimir Sungorkin, 68, Editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda 14 September 2022
Anatoly Gerashchenko, 72, Former Head of Moscow Aviation Institute, 21 September 2022
Nikolay Petrunin, 46, Deputy of the State Duma 12 October 2022
Nikolai Mushegian, 29, Co-founder of MakerDAO, a cryptocurrency company, 28 October 2022
Grigory Kochenov, 41, Creative Director of Agima, an IT company, 7 December 2022 Reportedly fell to his death from his balcony while officials from the Investigative Committee executed a search warrant for his apartment
Vladimir Bidenov, 61, Business associate and travel companion of Pavel Antov, 22 December 2022 – India Hotel Sai International, Rayagada, Odisha, India -Died of heart problems, though reportedly had no prior history, two days later his close companion died at the same hotel under suspicious circumstances
Pavel Antov, 65, Founder of Vladmirsky Standart, a meat processing company, and deputy (member) of the Legislative Assembly of Vladimir Oblast, 24 December 2022, India Below a window of Hotel Sai International, Rayagada, Odisha, India Fell out of window from Hotel Sai International, another Russian colleague, Vladimir Bidenov, died in the same hotel two days prior.
Magomed Abdulaev, 61, Former Chairman of the Government of the Republic of Dagestan 5 January 2023 Died at a hospital after being hit by a car while crossing a street
Dmitry Pawochka, 49, Former manager of Roscosmos, Sukhoi, Lukoil, Bank Menatep and Russdragmet, 26 January 2023 17th floor of a building on Leningradsky Avenue, Moscow, Burned alive after falling asleep with a lit cigarette
Vladimir Makarov, 72, Former Russian police general, had been in charge of cracking down on protesters. 13 February 2023 At his suburban home northwest of Moscow, State-run TASS news agency reported him found dead, in an apparent suicide, following his dismissal by President Vladimir Putin.If I was TW, I would move into a bunglaow, just to be on the safe side.
BD – “ratio of 100,000 front line troops to 400,000 logistical troops.”
TW – “I must admit I only skimmed your post before replying. Alone, there were 100,000 far right militia at the beginning of the conflict. I fundamentally disagree with your calculations. Your estimates of frontline troops are off the scales wrong.”
So, TW, can you enlighten me as to why my estimates of frontline troops are “off the scales wrong”
Do you question my figure of 500,000 Ukrainian troops over the course of the conflict? Are you are saying the number is higher?
The 500,000 figure is the figure given by the US and the Ukrainians, the Russians are estimating far smaller numbers.
Is it that the Ukrainian military are actually underestimating the number of its troops.
I can think of many, many examples of military forces and countries over exaggerating the size of their forces. The 1,000 bomber raids very rarely reached 1,000 planes, the Allies in the Second World War invented a whole Army force during the Normandy landings, the Union Army in the Civil War exaggerated the number of guns by using black pained logs as mock up of guns, Saddam Hussein was in part responsible for the story about WDM, Goring invented large numbers of planes and pilots during the 1930’s. There have been examples of tactical use of lowering numbers to attempt to lull enemies into false confidence, but I cannot think of a single example of this being done in terms of overall figures.
So does TW think that somehow he has information, so unusual, that the Russian armed forces do not know about?
Or is it that my estimation of teeth to tail ratios are wrong?
The figures given by Table from John J. McGrath, “The Other End of the Spear: The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio (T3R) in Modern
Military Operations.” The Long War Series, have a ratio of greater than 1:3 for every major war in the 20th Century. The tooth to tail ration for the US Civil War was estimated at 1:1.5. Even if we take that as our benchmark (which is crazy because of the change in the technical nature of warfare) this would give a breakdown of the 500,000 troops of 200,000 combat soldiers and 300,000 logistical support troops. So for your estimate, every single Ukrainian front line soldier had been killed. Not only that, working on US civil war figures (where medical support was practically nonexistent) the death to serious injury figure hovered around 1:1.5. Using these figures, which are underestimates of an unbelievably level. Not only would 2/5ths of the Ukrainian Armed forces to date have been killed, the rest would have been seriously wounded.Let us put the figure of deaths you have confidently predicted for the Ukrainian army into some context.
The North African Campaign in the Western Desert between 1940 and 1943 has death figues of:
British 35,478 killed
Free French 16,000 killed
United States United States 2,715 killed
6,528 missing in action
Italy 22,341 killed
Germany: 18,594 killed
3,400 missing
Vichy France 1,346 killedA total of 106,402
If you then add the deaths for the Italian campaign (1943 – 1945)
Where an estimated 60,000 allied troops were killed and 38,805 (German figures taken from Germany and the Second World War published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt) this makes a total of 98,805 troops killed from the Allied and German sides.So in the whole of these two campaigns, from 1940 – 1945 a total of 203, 207 troops were killed, yet in one year of this “Special Military Operation”, one side of that conflict, the Ukrainian side, has suffered the same level of casualties taken by all sides of these 5 years of full scale war?
Again just to add a little context, these campaigns included the following episodes:
The Battle of Sidi Barrani
The Battle of Beda Fomm
The capture of Tobruk
The siege of Tobruk
The fall of Tobruk
The Siege of Malta
Battle of Mersa Matruh
The first battle of El Alamein
The Second battle of El Alamein
The Invasion of North Africa (The Torch Landing)
The battle of Kasserine Pass
The Siege of Tunis
The invasion of Sicily (The Operation Husky)
The Salerno landings
The Battle of Anzio
The Liberation of Rome
The four assaults on Monte Cassino
The River Rapido crossings
Storming the Winter Line
The River Po CrossingsTo name just a few
So perhaps you can correct my estimates and show me how I have got it so wrong?
BD – “This would mean that your estimate of 200,000 number would claim that 75,000 more troops had been killed than had ever served at the front line!”
TW – “A fair point. But you are presuming a high number of wounded. From the sources I listen to that is not the case. Shocking numbers of the wounded are dying in situ because they’re unable to be evacuated. This would account for the higher number of deaths.”
I was referring to the number of deaths to front line troops. This was not a reference in any way to the wounded. You estimate 200,000 troop deaths. Even using the highest number of estimated Ukrainian troops during the whole conflict (500,000) and using a tooth to tail ratio which is less than any other modern war(as explained above). This would give a maximum of 125,000 front line troops (by Russian Estimates far less). This would mean that 75,000 soldiers were killed over and above the number that had ever served on the front line.
This in no way relates to the number of wounded.
TW – “No, that was Ursula von der Leyen’s figure. I believe the number at least double that.”
So you are working on the basis of 200,000 deaths.
Given that the estimate of deaths to seriously wounded ratio varies between 1:3 and up to 1:6 (because of the development of better battlefield medicine and anti biotics, the ratio of wounded to deaths has increased substantially oer time, the 1:3 ratio was the figure from WW2 so it is likely to be closer to the higher estimate), however if we go with a conservative estimate of say 1:4 that would give a figure of 200,000 dead and 800,000 seriously wounded but surviving.
Let’s look at the figures in the light of the fact that no estimate of the number of Ukrainian armed forces by either the West or by Russia has exceeded a number of 500,000 Ukrainian troops being involved in the whole war (the Russian estimate is far less).
Let us, for argument’s sake, use the highest estimate of total Ukrainian troop numbers of 500,000 given by the US, which is likely to be an exaggeration. And if we then look at the tooth to tail ratio as it is known in the military (the ratio betwen active troops and their logistical tail) we will find that this ratio has varied between 1:2.6 for WW1, 1:4.3 for WW2 up to 1:8.9 for the Gulf War and then use a conservative estimate of 1:4 the total of your figures, we would have an estimated ratio of 100,000 front line troops to 400,000 logistical troops.
This would mean that your estimate of 200,000 number would claim that 75,000 more troops had been killed than had ever served at the front line! (some logistical troops would have been killed, but your figures would give a minimum ratio of front line troops to logistical troops of 5:3, which is clearly ludicrous).
Not only that if 200,000 troops had been killed, of the remainng 300,000 survivors (Maximum US estimate), all of them had been seriously wounded, nearly three times each!!!
“It will all be over by Christmas”, said in 1914 by many on both sides of that particular conflict.
If the outcome of wars was so easily predictable, the likelihood is that far fewer of them would be fought, the losers would just give in without a fight.
“All you have to do is kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will crumble to the ground” said a certain ex corporal about Operation Barbarossa, another prediction that didn’t go too well.
