re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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All of this bears watching. So far it’s just a threat. Will Putin pull the trigger and if so will he waste the lives of thousands of young men to soothe his ego?

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He's already pulled the trigger. He started a war, gotten millions killed, and done it using the dumbest, cruelest tactics imaginable. It's not like this would be breaking new ground.

No, the real reason is probably that he can't. Whatever mobilization he no doubt is dying to begin is hamstrung but a multitude of factors including political, logistical, financial, economic, military, and so on.

I mean, they emptied out their prisons three years ago because they were short on bodies. How has that situation improved since then?

No, my guess is that they are too short on available manpower to come up with 500k troops. Until they do, there won't be a true mobilization.

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Then how is the casualties per month difference only 5k when Russia is the attacker?

35k per month estimated Russian figures, Ukraine just admitted they need 30k per month to maintain.

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This is actually a good question.

30k a month to maintain doesn't mean the Ukrainians are losing 30k/month. They rotate people out, send them home, and I would imagine that there comes a time when a Ukrainian soldier is allowed to say 'enough.' He's served his/her time and can go home and leave the war behind.

But as you have pointed out the Ukrainians desperately need to preserve manpower for when after this war is over, and the only way to do that is to rotate people in and out and that means it's own need for a constant stream of bodies even if they are taking 1/10th of the loses the Russians are taking.

The Russians don't do that. They believe that due to their 'overwhelming' majority of numbers that they can just keep sending people to die, and it's my belief that there is a core group of russian officers/nco's who are running a system within the system of just getting the 'recruit' and sending them as fast as they can to the front so that they themselves aren't the ones being sent. This is also a reason that the Russian losses are so high without any real gains to show for it.

That's not a Western style military that we are familiar with, and it's a luxury that the Ukrainians can't afford.

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Ukraine needs bare minimum a 1.5 to 1 ratio in their favor if not 2 or 3 to 1.

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You've got that backwards. Due to the Russian approach to this war, and that fact that they are the attacking party, it's the Russians who need more men, not the Ukrainians. They probably need 3-5x as many as the Ukrainians, and it's realistic that they're losses follow that ration as a result.

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this type of warfare just gets a ton of people killed

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You've got that backwards

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No, I don't.

Ukraine needs the casualty ratio in their favor. In their favor means the 1 side of X to 1.

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Uh, yeah

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Did you just quote the "average lifespan of a Russian recruit is 35 minutes" figure? Youve made multiple references to "meat wave' tactics and how many Russians it takes to capture X amount of ground. Now it's just an obvious thing that it's the style of warfare getting people killed, hence the numbers that are relatively close, and not really what one side or the other is doing or not doing?

The pivot is here. Up is down, left is right. Things must be really bad on the ground.