Maybe your screen displays something different from mine. Anyway, I’m referring to overall casualty numbers from the start of the invasion last year up to January of this year: total Russian casualties were estimated to be between 189,500 and 223,000. Ukraine suffered between 124,500 and 131,000. I calculated the ratios (“casualty exchange ratio”) from these numbers. The middle of the range is 1.6:1. If it’s clearer, that’s 8 Russian soldiers killed or wounded to 5 Ukrainian.
Before JM’s magical mystery tour I would have said the ratio was maybe 3:1 in Ukraine’s favor, so yeah, 1.6:1 is worse than I expected. AFAIK no one has ever claimed the exchange ratio from the start of the war to the time of JM’s talk was as high as 7:1 in Ukraine’s favor. He was confused or made it up.
Sorry, my brain must not have processed the 1. in front of the 4 and 8, I just misread your post.
Someone definetly made up that 7-1 number but it wasn’t John:
The Ukrainians have used Bakhmut to inflict massive losses on the attacking force: by some estimates at a ratio of 7:1. There comes a moment when it is smarter to withdraw than suffer growing losses and the damaging blow to morale of seeing the surrender of hundreds and maybe thousands of surrounded Ukrainian soldiers.
Danilov noted that the exact number is known only to the Ukrainian military and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
According to him, the casualty ratio in the war is currently at 1 to 7, 1 to 8, in some cases 1 to 10 – in favor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
there are categorical errors in the calculus. russia has utilized LDNR mobilized early in the war, and wagner convicts in the past 8 months. as they are not part of regular forces, they are absent from MoD accounts, and i would venture a guess pentagon’s signal intelligence probably omits it as well
Context, man. I feel like I’m repeating myself. At some point 7-1 in Bakhmut was reasonable given what the Russians were doing. A high ratio there and then was the justification for defending. Danilov gives three different numbers. What does “currently” mean? How do you know it’s over the time interval from the start of the war to when he’s speaking? The text refers to different cases. What are these? Different locations and times? The number 7 has come up, but JM says
35:32
ukrainians often say and it’s reported frequently in the west that seven
35:37
Russians die for every one Ukrainian
Which, outside of Bakhmut, I don’t believe is true.
I suppose it’s a just a guess, but better justified than what JM did. The Teixeira pic has text at the top that says “we have low confidence” but “informed by RUSS, Vagner, and UKR officials”. So it might include Wagner losses though who knows.
for sure, i believe pentagon is likely keeping some estimates based on their own satellite and drone surveillance, e.g. prior to the invasion they had a pictures of which brigade stood where, and number of tanks and IFVs, and at this point they would know how many such formations were destroyed. but the number in the leak seem to be estimates based on numbers reported by the parties. there is also a third set of numbers which might be open-source intelligence around how many obits appeared in ru and ukr sources. and semi-closed sources like russian prisons probably keep documents of how many inmates left each colony. a russian opposition jurist is trying to keep track of how many wagner recruits were amnestied, which might be equal to the difference of total convict recruits and kia/mia/wia/captured.
I mean what John says is true. It has often been reported in the West that the ratio is 7-1. Maybe you never believed that, good for you, it was obviously horseshit. John pointing out that that often reported number is horseshit shouldn’t be an indictment of him, it’s an indictment of the people who credulously reported it. And he’s correct that’s the ratio that was reported.
The entomology of this was that when the Pentagon gave an assessment they said X number of Russian deaths and then started talking about Bakhmut and it sounded like a huge number of Russians died in Bakhmut and people extrapolated a wild ratio of the over death ratio and reporters reported on it. The US then clarified that the number they said was all Russians killed since the start of the war, but like usual the clarification doesn’t get as much traction, but since then the myth as spread that the military media complex is constantly spreading wild ratios while the actual real ratio that they don’t talk about is much lower.
The 7:1 ratio, ironically enough, also came from right wing media but that it’s actual 7 to 1 Ukrainians that are dying and that came from the white supremacist leaker but the initial document said it was 7 Russians to one Ukrainian (it’s not clear but mostly likely the assessment was just talking about Bakhmut) but after 4Chan got ahold of it someone doctored it and flipped the numbers.
he takes an assessment shared by a lot of intelligence agencies, and calls their entire range bullshit, and then completely makes up a different number, flipping the advantage to russia. it doesn’t even matter if counteroffensive is successful, he is going to claim he was right in the face of any and all evidence and developments. even if putin’s regime falls, it will take a decade to uncover the true casualties on the russian side, during which he will happily collect speaking fees on the kissinger circuit.
I believed 7:1 when both sides were calling Bakhmut a meatgrinder and Wagner was doing frontal assaults with prisoners armed with shovels and threatening to shoot them if they turned back or tried to surrender. I expect the sledgehammer thing was pretty motivating too.
It’s a rhetorical trick. I don’t know if he’s doing it consciously. What I hear is this: Here’s a number, 7:1, that idiots are repeating (and 7 is a number I’ve heard, so it’s “true” but misleading). Then he swings to the other extreme, gives the 4:1 number favoring Russia his “friends” have quoted. But hey, if you don’t believe that, here’s the 2:1 number in favor of Russia I’ve thought it was all along, and it’s between the extremes, so it’s totally reasonable!
@Huehuecoyotl maybe 7 is just what comes to mind when we try to think of a number.
7:1 was never suggested as the casualty ratio for the war as a whole. It was always just for Bakhmut. It was discussed ITT a few months ago, with some people thinking it was plausible specifically because of Russian tactics and other people thinking it was too lopsided to be believable.
Trotting it out as a claim about the whole war (where it would indeed be completely absurd) is meant to make the claim of 2:1 in favor of Russia favorable, but that claim is absurd too. Any claim that isn’t 1.x:1 in favor of Ukraine needs heavy justification.
EDIT: Oops, should have read to the end, since you said most of this already!
It was suggested by that Ukrainian official I linked to. He never mentioned Bakhmut:
According to him, the casualty ratio in the war is currently at 1 to 7, 1 to 8, in some cases 1 to 10 – in favor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Casualty ratio in the war is 7, 8, 10 to one for the Ukrainians. Not in Bakhmut, in the war. This “only Bakhmut” nit picking is a distinction without a difference though, as a big chunk of the fighting and casualties has been in Bakhmut the last six months. And John would say the 7-1 ratio just in Bakhmut is also absurd since the Russians are firing a lot more shells, and that’s what he’s basing his guess on what the casualty ratio might be.
And if you guys agree with John that the 7-1 ratio is absurd then what the fuck are we even talking about here?
