• Buffalox@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Russia mobilized around 300,000 soldiers last year, I suppose drafting is added to that.

      It’s estimated they have 1,150,000

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces

      It’s absolutely enormous, but fortunately Ukraine doesn’t have to deal with all of them, as some are in other regions protecting Russian borders, and there are also forces in Moscow.

      But even with that many active in the military, losses of this magnitude are not sustainable. And Russia has already burned through most of their elite forces.

      AFAIK it’s usually only half in active service that are actually soldiers, the other half serve as support, for instance logistics medics and engineers.

      • Clent@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Are there counts of wounded? There has to be tens of thousands that weren’t outright killed but will not be able to return to the front.

        • SpacePirate@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          The standard rule of thumb that has been used in all casualty estimations is three wounded (taken out of combat), captured, or missing for every dead.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Casualty means wounded, it’s a bit mixed some say the number from Ukraine is dead others that it is wounded, I think it’s supposed to be dead, and if that’s the case then there should be 3-5 times as many wounded.

          • elbucho@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            There’s no way that the number represents Russian dead. Firstly, there would be no way for Ukraine to verify that. If they drop a cluster bomb on 30 guys, they’re going to report 30 casualties, regardless of whether those soldiers are wounded, killed, or can return to action at some point in the future. They don’t have someone walking through the field after every firefight tallying up the dead.

            Secondly, if you figure 3 wounded for every 1 killed (and use the Ukrainian figure for casualties), that would put Ukraine’s estimates at about 1.2 million Russian soldiers wounded or killed. There’s no way that’s right.

            • Pringles@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              I always interpreted these casualties as wounded included and estimate a large part of those have been recirculated into combat after becoming fit again. That also means that some are counted at least twice. If this really were accurate kill numbers, Russia would’ve dropped out of the war already. 200k body bags is unsustainable, even for Russia.

                • elbucho@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Oh for sure. But there are a lot fewer than 300k corpses. I’m guessing it’s sub 100k. Which is still an enormous clusterfuck of epic proportions, mind. As a reminder, the US had ~58,000 dead over the course of the entire war in Vietnam (~10 years total for active operations). Russia has had probably around twice that number killed in less than 2 years in Ukraine.

      • mea_rah@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Keep in mind that there’s a so-called tooth to trail ratio. Typically you’d have (much) less than 30% of military personnel that’s actually meant to engage in combat.

        So out of that 1.1M, there’s going to be less than 400k people directly in combat situations. The rest is logistics. And 30% is a very large portion that would likely have less effective combat force. (Perhaps in line with what can be seen of russian army in Ukraine)