Whatever one thinks of the Ukraine war, it is obviously a tragedy not only for the Ukrainians but also for the Russians. It seems very clear to me that the Russians have been forced to a stalemate; Russia is no longer in command of the situation, able to dictate the tempo of operations, which has been ceeded to the supplier of tanks and other ordnance - primarily the United States and Germany (the Germans assuming an oversized importance out of proportion to their general uselessness). In fact, the Americans are now in a prime position either to end the war tomorrow or to let it continue as they wish, simply by regulating the flow of arms to the Ukrainians.
I was musing on this while I was reading two articles on the 'Meduza' website. The first is an estimate that 80% of the prisoner-recruits to the Wagner mercenary force have already been killed:
https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/01/2...up-s-losses-80-percent-of-50k-inmate-recruits
The second is an interview with such a recruit (previously a petty criminal and murderer):
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/01/24/wagner-opened-the-door-for-me The takeaways to me from this article were these quotations:
According to Bogdanov, on July 31, after a week of training, he and some other inmates (by his account, about 200 people) were sent to Ukraine’s Luhansk region. His “job” there, he tells me, consisted of “napping, sleeping, and moving forward.” “We were prepared, but we weren’t prepared to get pounded like that,” he tells me. “When [a shell] comes flying out of nowhere, goddamn! It’s hard to last even one day out there. There were people who didn’t even make it 24 hours. You have to think hard about every step you take.”
In total, Bogdanov spent eight days on the battlefield. On the evening of August 7, Ukrainian troops began firing at his position from tanks. He saw a bright flash in the darkness, and immediately afterwards, a piece of shrapnel severed his leg at the shin, leaving it hanging by a tendon. [my emphasis]
Well, so what, you might say - the man is a criminal and certainly not deserving of a great deal of sympathy. I wouldn't disagree. The tragedy for Russia is that this war is unwinnable; if the Germans (and the rest of the useless Western Europeans) are not going to prevent the Russians from winning this war, the Americans, British, and the Central Europeans certainly are. Meanwhile, a generation of Russian men is being fed into the meat-grinder, and the Russian economy is being destroyed by sanctions and divestment. Unlike the Ukraine, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to be in any hurry to rebuild the Russian economy afterwards.
Personally, I'd be interested if anyone has come across any average life expectancy figures for the combatants in this war.
www.theguardian.com
