Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, July 24, 2025 08:03
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Tuesday, July 22, 2025 6:35 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

European fuckheads in the political class deserve to be shot for their sheer stupidity and corruption.

Comparing Russia’s Life Expectancy and GDP per capita with the EU indicates Russian leaders should be shot before EU leaders:

1) Overall Life Expectancy: As of 2023, EU life expectancy at birth was around 81.5 years, while Russia's life expectancy in 2021 was 70.06 years.

https://www.google.com/search?q=compare+life+expectancy+between+Russia
+and+EU

2) The EU's GDP per capita is significantly higher than Russia's, with FRED Blog stating Russia's GDP per capita being about two-thirds smaller than the EU's in 2020. While Russia's nominal GDP per capita for 2025 is projected at $14,260, and PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) GDP per capita is $49,380, the EU's nominal GDP per capita for 2025 is estimated at $44,387, and its PPP GDP per capita is projected at $64,545. The EU also has a substantially larger overall GDP than Russia.

https://www.google.com/search?q=compare+gdp+per+capita+between+Russia+
and+EU

3) Signym, since Russia is hiding recent data, the comparison with the EU has gotten worse:

No births, no deaths, no data
Russia is pulling demographic stats from public view. What’s the Kremlin trying to hide?
July 14, 2025

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/07/14/no-births-no-deaths-no-data

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025 3:58 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yep. Pre- 2000 leadership was really fucked up. But look at the progress Russia's made since then.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

"Constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear."

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025 6:34 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukraine’s military death tolls underestimated, Russia recruits sufficient to cover its frontline losses

By Ben Aris in Berlin | July 22, 2025

https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-s-military-death-tolls-underestima
ted-russia-recruits-sufficient-to-cover-its-frontline-losses-392172/

Ukraine’s official military casualty figures in the war with Russia may be vastly understated, according to a report published by the French newspaper Le Monde on Monday. Russia’s death toll is much higher, but official figures show the Kremlin’s voluntary recruitment drive is replenishing the ranks faster than its soldiers are being killed.

Death tolls in the four-year old war are state secrets on both sides of the conflict and analysts have been reduced to using proxies to estimate the true toll and official estimates from Defence Ministries are almost certainly massaged up or down. However, even these estimates are stark.

Since the start of the conflict over three years ago a total of 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another 380,000 wounded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CBS News in February.

“The real death toll is likely much higher,” Le Monde reported based on Ukraine’s efforts to build military cemeteries. The state has two new national military memorial projects under construction in Kyiv and Lviv, as graveyards for fallen Ukrainian soldiers are nearing capacity. “Construction projects rising across Ukraine say more about the scale of the slaughter than statistics ever could,” Le Monde said, in comments widely shared in Russian media.

Ukraine’s manpower shortage

While the actual numbers remain cloaked in confusion, it is very clear that Ukraine is suffering from an acute manpower shortage, while Russia is not. No men aged 18 to 60 have been allowed to leave the country since February 2022 without special permission.

Russian President Vladimir Putin resorted to a partial mobilisation in September 2022 in the first year of the war, when the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) faced a temporary manpower shortage. The Kremlin has avoided a general mobilisation at all costs, aware that it could cause a major revolt. And the costs have been high; the Kremlin has been paying out an entire year’s salary or more as signed up fees for voluntary recruits, which takes up a third of the military budget by itself.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was forced to order a general mobilisation almost as soon as the war started. Now anger and resentment is rising at the aggressive press-ganging of military-age men into the army – a process known as ‘busification’. Ukraine’s social media is filled with videos of men being snatched from the street and bundled into minivans by recruitment officers, sometimes at gunpoint.

Those forced to fight are fleeing their positions in record numbers. Desertions from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is rampant. In the first six months of this year, Ukraine’s Prosecutor’s Office reported that it had opened 107,672 new criminal cases for desertion. Since 2022 some 230,804 such criminal cases have been instigated, suggesting that more soldiers have deserted the Ukrainian army than there are fighting men in today’s British, French and German armies combined, The Spectator reports.

And there is no respite for the members of the AFU. While Russia has sufficient men to be able to rotate them in and out of combat, Ukrainian soldiers serve continuously and are exhausted. A draft law proposed last year releasing military personnel from service after 36 months was squashed by the government for fear exacerbating the labour shortage. Small protests are regularly held by the families of soldiers calling not for the release of their men, but simply to give them a break from the front line occasionally.

Another new law making it possible for men aged 18-26, that are not subject to conscription, to volunteer for military service managed to attract a total of 500 recruits.

Russia fewer deaths, faster recruitment

The numbers of reported Russian dead from the war are clearly higher, but they also don’t add up. Ukraine’s supporters report the Russian death toll practically every day, usually citing the official estimates released by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, as part of its media campaign to denigrate the AFR and boost support for Ukraine. Currently the numbers coming from the “meat grinder” that is the battle for Donbas sees at least a 1,000 Russian soldiers die a day according to these estimates.

However, other sober estimate put the number far lower. A verified list of dead Russian soldiers maintained by Mediazona and the BBC already exceeds 115,000 -- about 5,000 names are added each month, or 161 deaths per day from the whole of Ukraine, not 1,000.

The actual number of deaths is widely estimated at roughly double the Mediazona estimates, or around 300 dead a day. Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), for example, puts Russian fatalities at 250,000, the Moscow Times reports. However, due to the incomplete access to information, the real number could be far higher.

Nevertheless, these estimates are still a third of what the Ukrainian Defence Ministry is reporting, and they are low enough to allow Russia to sustain its fight indefinitely as it can replace all the casualties with fresh recruits.

Typically, three times more soldiers on the offensive die than those on the defensive, However, what few numbers have come out on the daily death toll of the AFU are roughly on the same order as the estimate of Russian deaths – and with its smaller population even if fewer Ukrainians are dying than Russians, it can still lose the war by running out of men before Russia does.

While the AFU has the drone advantage, Russia maintains an overwhelming artillery, missile and heavy glide bombs advantage, powerful weapons that can completely destroy Ukraine’s defensive positions.

Much clearer is the information on Putin’s ability to replenish his manpower by recruiting fresh volunteers to fight for Russia.

“Some analysts — including myself — recently thought Putin would be unable to find enough conscripts to cover losses this year and that by late 2025, forcing him to choose between a forced draft and a ceasefire,” said Sergei Shelin in an opinion piece in the Moscow Times. “Unfortunately, the data paints a different picture.”

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed Russia suffered 32,000 irreversible losses in June alone (100 deaths a day), but official Russian figures suggested Russia added 190,000 volunteer and contract soldiers in the first five months of 2025, or 38,000 per month (1,225 per day). Russia is recruiting more soldiers a month than it is losing on the frontline, even if you believe Syrskyi’s probably inflated number. Monthly inflows exceed losses by roughly 10,000, according to Shelin.

Putin says about 700,000 Russians are currently fighting in Ukraine. His goal is to increase the number of active servicemen to 1.5mn largely through volunteers that draw heavily on Russia’s poorest regions, while the AFU is forced to resort to conscription of the dwindling pool of men left in the country. Russia’s population is at least four-times bigger than that of Ukraine’s, and that calculation is before you count out the roughly six million men that have already fled the country after the war started.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025 7:05 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russian authorities recently detained Bryansk Oblast Vice Governor Nikolai Simonenko and former Belgorod Oblast Vice Governor Rustem Zainullin, likely as part of the Kremlin’s continued efforts to scapegoat local officials for larger Russian border security failures following Ukraine's August 2024 Kursk Oblast incursion. Russian law enforcement officials told Kremlin newswire TASS on July 22 that Russian authorities detained Simonenko on abuse of power charges and searched Simonenko’s home and workplace as part of a larger criminal case investigating the embezzlement of funds allocated for the construction of defensive fortifications in Bryansk Oblast border areas.[19] Russian authorities similarly detained Zainullin for fraud on June 21 on suspicion of embezzling 32 million rubles (roughly $408,000) in funds allocated to constructing defensive fortifications in the Belgorod Oblast border area.[20] Russian authorities previously detained former Kursk Oblast Governor Alexei Smirnov on similar embezzlement charges in what ISW assessed to be a concerted Kremlin effort to use Kursk Oblast officials as scapegoats for Russia’s failure to repel the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast.[21] Russian President Vladimir Putin also notably dismissed Russian Minister of Transport and former Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit on July 7 just prior to Starovoit’s reported suicide.[22]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-22-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025 3:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine’s military death tolls underestimated, Russia recruits sufficient to cover its frontline losses

By Ben Aris in Berlin | July 22, 2025

https://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-s-military-death-tolls-underestima
ted-russia-recruits-sufficient-to-cover-its-frontline-losses-392172/

Since the start of the conflict over three years ago a total of 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed

I hope you see now why we shouldn't believe "reports" out of Kiev, and their slavish quotes in western "intelligence" agencies

Quote:
and another 380,000 wounded, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told CBS News in February.

“The real death toll is likely much higher,”

Yeah, no shit. Why aren't any western "news" agencies attempting to estimate Kiev's dead, like Mediazona is doing with Russia's?

Quote:

Russia fewer deaths, faster recruitment

The numbers of reported

By Kiev. Until about six month ago, our policy was to make "our" intelligence estimates to match Kiev's. Talk about delusion by policy!

Quote:
Russian dead from the war are clearly higher [than what?], but they also don’t add up. Ukraine’s supporters report the Russian death toll practically every day, usually citing the [Kiev's] official estimates released by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, as part of its media campaign to denigrate the AFR and boost support for Ukraine. Currently the numbers coming from the “meat grinder” that is the battle for Donbas sees at least a 1,000 Russian soldiers die a day according to these estimates.

However, other sober estimate put the number far lower. A verified list of dead Russian soldiers maintained by Mediazona and the BBC already exceeds 115,000 -- about 5,000 names are added each month, or 161 deaths per day from the whole of Ukraine, not 1,000.

The actual number of deaths is widely estimated at roughly double the Mediazona estimates, or around 300 dead a day. Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), for example, puts Russian fatalities at 250,000, the Moscow Times

Moscow Times isn't even in Moscow

Quote:
reports. However, due to the incomplete access to information, the real number could be far higher.

Or lower.

According to Mediazona/ BBC, despite the fact that Russians are on the offensive, the LONG term trend of Russian deaths in going LOWER. That's despite the fact that Mediazona is now including probate proceedings.

There's always a lag so discount the last three months, but the trend is unmistakable.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

"Constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear."

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Thursday, July 24, 2025 7:22 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Putin’s chief ideologue: Media reveals who is rewriting history for Kremlin leader

By Kateryna Shkarlat | Tue, July 22, 2025 - 23:00

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/putin-s-chief-ideologue-media-reveals-
who-1753212861.html

Former Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky is likely leading a Kremlin project aimed at promoting its version of history, according to the Skhemy investigative project.

In particular, sources of the Skhemy project claim that Medinsky knows how to craft the right phrasing for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Putin has his own ideas — for example, at the Bucharest summit in 2008, he already stated that the Ukrainian state does not exist. So these ideas were not new for Putin, but now Medinsky is helping to give them an ideological form," said a source close to Estonia’s security structures.

At the same time, investigators found that Medinsky, through the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO), which he controls, is carrying out ideological initiatives in the occupied territories and supporting military units. Moreover, Medinsky is reportedly overseeing the imposition of Kremlin ideology on schoolchildren across the post-Soviet space and is involved in publishing history textbooks.

Medinsky and Crimea

In March 2014, just two weeks after the occupation of Crimea, then-Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky presented Putin with his ministry’s plans for the peninsula. Specifically, he proposed organizing theatrical performances based on Russian literary works, holding exhibitions dedicated to the Russian Empire, and supplying Crimean libraries with books from Russia. Since then, Medinsky regularly visited Crimea to oversee the implementation of these initiatives.

Six months later, he introduced a school textbook presenting the Russian interpretation of Crimea’s history. In the foreword written by Medinsky himself, it is emphasized that the involvement of the Russian Military Historical Society, which he heads, influenced the content of the publication — particularly the emphasis placed on military and political aspects. The text also claims that the "reunification of Crimea with Russia" allegedly enriches national historiography with "interesting and necessary works."

Occupied Crimea and Luhansk

In the temporarily occupied cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, the first branches of the Russian Military Historical Society began operating in 2022 — after the Kremlin announced their "accession" to the Russian Federation, a move that violates international law.

"Medinsky is uniquely valuable to Putin because he believes in what he says. Even 20 years ago, he sincerely believed that Russia was innocent and surrounded only by enemies — and he still believes that today. And Putin believes the same. In that sense, they’ve found each other," said a former Russian politician, speaking on condition of anonymity to Delfi, Estonian media outlet.

In December 2021, Putin established the Interdepartmental Commission on Historical Enlightenment and appointed Medinsky as its head. According to the presidential decree, the commission operates under the Russian president and coordinates government agencies, particularly on matters related to the "protection of historical truth and preservation of historical memory."

The commission has three main objectives:

• to unify the approach of state bodies to historical education;

• to analyze and counter the activities of foreign actors that harm Russia’s national historical interests;

• to propose counter-propaganda historical and cultural initiatives.

The Skhemy investigative project obtained the minutes of one of the commission’s meetings held in February 2025.

According to the document, under Medinsky’s leadership, the commission instructed Russia’s Ministry of Education to develop a "unified state textbook on regional history" for schools in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine. The textbook is to be titled The History of Novorossiya and Donbas, with completion planned by June 2025.

Earlier, we reported that the head of the Russian delegation in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinsky, attempted to justify why a ceasefire was unnecessary for negotiations — citing a fabricated quote falsely attributed to Napoleon. Russian 'historian' Medinsky quoted a fake Napoleon statement after Ukraine talks https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russian-historian-medinsky-quoted-a-fa
ke-1747424590.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, July 24, 2025 8:03 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Long Process of European Unity

Leadership in Europe today goes beyond the big three Western European countries - France, Germany and the UK. Poland is now an important power that cannot be ignored.

By Minna Ålander | Jul 24, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-long-process-of-european-un
ity

Hi Everyone,

I gave an interview to the New York Times recently that would have been unremarkable otherwise, had they not so carefully omitted mentioning Poland – which I did talk about quite a bit. The article was about Germany, France and the UK coming together to figure out what to do about Trump and to prepare alternative solutions for Europe to be ready for the US to reduce its presence to a minimum. But discounting Poland from that equation simply misses the point of what has happened in Europe in the course of the past three years of Russia’s war in Ukraine: power becoming more diffusely, but in some ways also more fairly distributed. It is not enough anymore to get Western Europe together, Central and Eastern (and Northern) Europe have developed a much stronger voice of their own. In some ways, this is still part of the process of healing from the Cold War division in Europe, and the war in Ukraine has accelerated it.

Yours,
Minna

The Long Process of European Unity

The Cold War was not that long ago and its shadow has been long in Europe. It has been only 20 years since the EU (and NATO) integrated the Central and Eastern European countries in the early 2000’s. Within the EU, Germany and France were the dominant powers in the past decade after the UK’s decision to exit the EU, and Western European economic interests dominated over Eastern Europe’s security interests. The Nord Stream gas pipelines with Russia were perhaps the most obvious display of this dynamic. That the West knew better was the Zeitgeist when the East was being integrated into the (Western) European project. Not so anymore – that Western Europeans clearly got Russia wrong is indisputable. What was considered peripheral views and interests have become much more central now that Europe is beginning to imagine a new security order.

Not only has Central and Eastern Europe gained new recognition, but power has generally become distributed in a more diffuse way. Small states have stepped up to fill the vacuum that France and Germany’s initial inability to offer credible leadership caused, as I have described previously. Some small states have gone to exceptional lengths, like Denmark. The Nordic-Baltic 8 have developed a strong voice of their own. And among the larger states, Poland and Italy have entered centre stage in Europe: in an unexpected turn of events, Giorgia Meloni’s government has been more stable than the previous UK governments. Poland has taken its place next to Germany and France and the Weimar triangle has gained new prominence. The Weimar+ format can flexibly include other aforementioned partners, recently particularly the UK.

That is truly new: that while it is necessary and welcome that the three big Western European countries – France, Germany and the UK – work more closely together again, it is not sufficient alone. Poland has now become much more part and parcel of that inner circle. And both Europe’s south and north demand to be represented more directly, not just through Germany and France. European unification and overcoming the Cold War division is not growing through amalgamation into one entity but through a multiplicity of voices.

Among the ten countries that joined the EU in the 2004 “big bang enlargement”, Poland and Estonia rank among some of the most impressive success stories. Estonia has quadrupled both GDP per capita and average monthly salaries since joining the EU and Poland’s GDP per capita has increased by 40 percent, which is significantly higher than the 27 percentage average for the group of ten countries that joined at the same time (Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia). As a share of GDP per capita, Poland leads in NATO with the highest defence spending – higher than that of the US. Poland is also on course to become one of Europe’s largest military powers, aiming to motivate every male citizen to get a basic military training in order to build a large reserve that can sustain a prolonged defence effort. In addition, Poland is mining its border with Russia, including also other defensive structures and obstacles. Poland is taking no chances of being invaded again, as has been its fate many times over in the past. Poland’s economic and military power are recognized now in ways that were far from self-evident as recently as three years ago.

Power distribution in Europe is shifting - for the better. It is not necessarily easier or faster to deal with many more players, but on the other hand various groups of (smaller) countries can take and drive initiative in lieu of larger powers, if domestic political instability or lack of fiscal space restrict the latter’s ability to lead. When more countries are contributing, the EU is less likely to become paralyzed by Franco-German inability to build consensus. It is certainly not making it any easier to answer Kissinger’s famous question about whom to call if he wants to call Europe - the EU Commission, for example, is one actor among many. There will never be a single European leader; leadership only exists in plural. A more evenly and, perhaps even to an extent, fairly shared leadership is needed when the continent is taking charge of its security. Europe needs good ideas and bold initiatives, no matter from which geographical location or size of economy they come from.

P.S. In today’s good news: already by April, Europe had filled the gap left by no new US aid to Ukraine this year. The effort has mainly been led by the Nordics and the UK (and the EU institutions), with other Europeans allocating significantly less aid. Given that it has been the four small Nordic countries who have filled the support gap, it is yet more proof that one should never underestimate the small ones!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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