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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

As much as I'd love this to be true, we get a lot of propaganda here in the West and in general both sides are burning a lot of resources. Russia had more resources to start with and can probably replenish at least some of them (manpower and tanks).

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It's not that clear. Russia had huge stockpiles of stuff. But it's old, and much of it is in poor quality. The tech being deployed in Ukraine is very poor. We've seen WWI era rifles, almost WW2 era tanks, tanks that don't work or don't have gunners, planes without navigation. A gun is still a gun, but they also don't have as many people. The Russian army was a peacetime army. It wasn't ready for war and they've had a tough time recruiting people in the past several months. They've also drawn a hard line against recruiting from ethnic Russians in places like Moscow. The biggest conflict though is in getting the stuff to the frontlines. Their comms, intel, and logistics are pretty poor.

But they do have a lot of people, and if they're willing to let them die, it'll take a long time to get rid of them.

For comparison, Ukraine's military is quickly replacing its old Soviet junk with more modern (sometimes top of the line!), advanced western weaponry while Russia is replenishing its equipment with... even older Soviet junk. Even if Putin is willing to throw more bodies into the meat grinder, the average lifespan of a Russian grunt will diminish at an increasing rate. Russian bodies are piling up faster and faster as WW2 equipment is no match for modern warfare.

For comparison, the Soviet Afghan war had 14.5k killed and 53k wounded over a decade.

Western intel estimates 80k total casualties killed & wounded on the Russian side in 6 months in Ukraine.

> They've also drawn a hard line against recruiting from ethnic Russians in places like Moscow.

Interesting. First I've heard of this.

Sounds like Putin wants the large number of casualties to not be in areas where unhappy family members rioting can affect politics.

Pretty much. Also general racism. The real meat shields are the russian "separatists" from eastern ukraine.

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