One million and counting: Russian casualties hit milestone in Ukraine war | Hacker News Reader

One million and counting: Russian casualties hit milestone in Ukraine war

theguardian.com

45 pointsrawgabbit24 comments

Looking at Syria and Iran and Russia's passivity in these conflicts, I now wonder whether Russia is still a regional power at all in the wake of the massive losses it suffered in the Ukraine disaster. It lost its status as a military world power in the first weeks of the invasion.

Russia came in unprepared for this war, and is not prepared for a traditional peer conflict, but is building out a LOT of drone production capacity which will now be decisive in regional wars.

It's not going to save Iran from US stratospheric bombers, but yes the capability to throw 200 de-facto cruise missiles and 4,000 FPV drones a day at the front lines is a huge threat to anyone unfortunate enough to share a border with Russia.

I was reading that Russia’s economy is on the brink of recession. Any thoughts on what would push it to failure? Failed economies have a hard time waging war.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-economy-recession-ukraine-...

If things continue as they are, there is good reason to believe that this point will be reached automatically:

https://youtu.be/gpyLQvNsUw4

It actually already collapsed in 2022-2023 according to projections from March 2022:

https://theconversation.com/the-russian-economy-is-headed-fo...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-faces-biggest-economic...

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/03/vlad...

nm, Im sure the more up to date projections are accurate and the projections from 2022, 2023, 2024 and early 2025 were abberations.

Russian Banks Fear Debt Crisis Is Coming as War Strains Economy - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-26/russian-b... | https://archive.today/3DUEG - June 26th, 2025

> Tensions among Putin’s top officials over risks to the economy spilled into the open at the flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week.

> “We are on the verge of slipping into a recession,” Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said during a panel discussion in which Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina argued the economy was experiencing a necessary cooling. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov acknowledged “we’re going through a cold spell now.”

> Putin made his position clear in a speech the following day. “Some specialists, experts, point to the risks of stagnation and even recession,” he said. “This, of course, should not be allowed under any circumstances.”

Russia is a petrostate. The only thing that would critically damage Russia's economy is persistently low oil prices.

In the near term, the only way to get there is probably 100% uncapping US production, maybe holding our nose and getting Venezuela's production back up.

Recession is probably a bit meaningless at this point. The Russian economy is already quite small in relation to the country size and population. They have plenty of natural resources though, and oil which they are exporting. In many ways it's an economy that comes pre-collapsed. But the govt has a lot of leeway to keep the internal economy going. Interest rates are 20%, without which inflation would be running away - although, they have capital controls and are disconnected from the majority of the world's financial systems so how much sense does currency conversion have anyway?

At some point things will have to come to a head because civilian businesses, military manufacturing and military service are competing for the same workforce, one of those actually consuming the people. The govt can keep things going for a long time under difficult conditions though. More of a concern is probably what happens when the war ends. Can they even let the war end now? They have a war economy and going back is going to be hard.

This is dubiously sourced and defies comparisons with other conflicts. These casualty figures are at the same level as total US casualties in World War 2. It beggars belief that a regional war can produce such casualties. By contrast total US casualties in Vietnam were about 211,000, and Korea, about 140,000. Given the sources for these Russian casualty figures there is a very high likelihood that these numbers are grossly misstated.

https://200.zona.media/

Absolute floor of dead russians is 111 thousand

Korean war had 2.5 million military and about the same of civilian casualities. And it was 20 million country fighting 9 million country.

Population of russia is 140 million. And Ukraine 37 million.

Yup, and casualties includes injuries that take people out of action, not just deaths. A badly sprained ankle is a casualty. So total casualties will be significantly higher than that 110K.

The US and Russia do not conduct wars the same way. I'm not sure comparing them is a valid sanity check.

So, in all, 1.5m casualties. I guess they're just numbers in a spreadsheet as far as Russia's leaders are concerned.

“Some people die in road accidents, others from alcohol – when they die, it’s unclear how. But your son lived, do you understand? He fulfilled his purpose.” - Putin, to the mother of a dead soldier.

The Economist reports that the war is causing a boom in some small towns in Russia. There's a big death benefit paid to the families.

> He fulfilled his purpose

That "purpose" being dying for Putin's pointless and evil war. Fuck Putin.

Another million lives, thrown into the meat grinder of war for no good reason. Just as another war starts.

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic."

-- Joseph Stalin

>The estimate aligns with a recent study by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which puts Russian military deaths at up to 250,000 and total casualties, including the wounded, at over 950,000. Ukraine has suffered very high losses as well, with between 60,000 and 100,000 personnel killed and total casualties reaching approximately 400,000.

I searched for the CSIS study to see what their methodology was and found a video

https://www.csis.org/analysis/evening-one-million-russian-ca...

...which explained:

* Nothing. Nada. Literally zero evidence of any kind combined with literally zero analysis.

* An assertion that this number "proves" that it's not true that "Russia holds all the cards". They appear to want to rebut Trump's opinion.

* The final comment was about the military assistance bill and how important it was that it be passed.

There was also some random facts that look like they might support the original claim but which emphatically do not (e.g. amount of land taken).

The average Russian would of course also be equally inclined to believe their military industrial complex's PR lobby group when it makes unsourced claims like this. That's coz the average Russian is not too smart.

I don't see a video on the site you linked, but I do see a subheader

>In That Number ... 1 million

With a link to https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-battlefield-woes-ukrai...

which has a PDF: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-...

Which has a pageful of sources for the numbers

It has pagefuls of references to claims about lost tanks (also dubious), land taken (probably accurate), comparison of losses to historical wars etc. which are the random facts I was referring to.

Nothing about how the American military industrial complex's lobby and this war's biggest profiteer by far pulled that impressive 1 million number from tho.

Dont worry those weapons did tons of good though. Super successful. As your article points out - it's imperative you keep buying.

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