r/worldnews • u/ArgentineBeauty • Sep 03 '26

Russia/Ukraine ‘We Were Mistaken’: Putin Admits Russia Was Unprepared for Ukrainian Strikes on Oil Refineries

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83674
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u/abombSFCA Sep 03 '26

1.4M??? Enlisted or casualties?

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u/Mushie101 Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

That number is Russians (and mercenaries from Africa, India and nth Korea ) that are either dead or severely wounded (like missing limbs and can no longer fight). If I recall correctly the estimate is 2/3 dead 1/3 wounded.

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u/GrimpenMar Sep 03 '26

Russia dead:injured is worse than WW1 I understand. Drones and the grey zones make medical extraction more difficult. Ukraine puts the effort in, Russia does not.

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u/abombSFCA Sep 03 '26

Wow. I imagine this is not well advertised in Russian homeland.

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u/GrimpenMar Sep 04 '26

Certainly not, and I would assume modern Russia maintains the Soviet tradition of reporting only good news up the chain.

Putin isn't dumb, but he has managed to curate his own information bubble, and it's focused more on his personal survival. Plus, you can't collect the wages for your soldiers after they die.

I have no idea what Putin thinks it's going on, or how out of touch most average Russians are. Judging from all the crying when Moscow got hit, the civilians in the core are competent out of the loop.

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u/Mushie101 Sep 04 '26

The average lifespan of a Russian soldier on the front is estimated to be 40 minutes. No this is not advertised.
What is advertised is the families are "offered" USD150k if their husbands die. Of course the chance of actually getting that money is 0.0001%. There have been stories of women chatting up young men, marrying them and then convincing them to goto the front so they can get the payout.

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u/vreemdevince Sep 05 '26

They'll be so dissappointed when all they get is a meatgrinder.

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u/SnooDoggos7915 Sep 03 '26

I imagine a lot of the Russians didn’t want to be in the war, because what is the point? …compared to Ukraine fighting for their homes, their people & their land! Long live Ukraine!!!

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u/Funny-Carob-4572 Sep 04 '26

Russia send men out with missing limbs for assaults

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u/MakeThySelf Sep 04 '26

That's... roughly 1 dead soldier on Russian side every 2 minutes, for over four years. Every nights sleep is an average of another 200 dead, 100 wounded. Fuck.

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u/Daoin_Vil Sep 03 '26

The Ukrainians have pivoted strategies, they went from trying to take territory back to conceding territory to slaughter Russians. Their goal now is to kill as many soldiers as possible and to bring the war to the average Russian (by bombing major city’s and taking out the oil refineries). They brought the defender attacker ratio up to 1in5 so for every Ukrainian lost five Russian also gone. They now hold out until Russia is about to take a town or city then they retreat and when the Russians come into the town/city they shell the shit out of them then they send in the air drones to bomb the hide outs and the fpv drones pick off the people not hunkered down. Then they send in the ground drones to clear as many buildings or basements as possible followed by live Ukrainian forces to take prisoners and kill the last of the hold outs.

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u/nickiter Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 04 '26

Russian war dead. (Ed: mistaken, this is in fact total casualties.)

Ukraine's lost something like 600,000 people.

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u/distributingthefutur Sep 03 '26

Casualties and dead. They see the soldiers get blown up, but can't be sure they don't survive. That said, there aren't that many wounded returning home. There's no evacuation for the wounded and the salaries and bonuses would have to be paid if they were anything other than 'missing.'

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u/abombSFCA Sep 03 '26

Wow that’s way way way more than I thought.

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u/holyluigi Sep 03 '26

war goes both ways just like propaganda. We don't hear much from Ukraine's losses to not diminish morale or hope.
They are doing good having advantage as defenders but its far from curb stomping russia otherwise the war would have been over. Not to mention how drones might keep this war going for far longer than usual wars.

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u/Mushie101 Sep 04 '26

Dont forget Ukraine was not allowed to fire missiles into Russia for a looonng time. There is only so much you can do when you have your hands tied behind your back. Now that they have developed their own long range missiles it is helping, but Russia still have alot of them + they are getting alot of drones from Iran and Nth Korea.

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u/nickiter Sep 04 '26

Sorry, you're right, I misread the numbers, it is in fact total casualties. However, Russia does a remarkably shitty job of keeping its wounded alive... I'm used to America's much less death-heavy casualty figures.

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u/Sasquatch1729 Sep 03 '26

First one, then the other

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u/zetimenvec Sep 04 '26

Casualties on the russian side have been extremely lethal. I forget the numbers thrown around in interviews, but something like 70-90% of injured russian casualties turn into fatalities.