this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Does anyone have a source about the Russian attrition rate? I can’t find one
It's worded in such a way as to be meaningless - half of what? The original number of Russian soldiers, the original number plus Wagner and other extra troops, the current number deployed with/without mercenaries? Plus Russia's numbers don't look like US numbers, don't quite look like Ukraines numbers.
That said heres the first source I found:
...
Those numbers refer to the current number of deployed and undeployed Russian soldiers plus mercenaries, which is clearly not the numbers the ad is using.
To be clear, I fully support Ukraine and fully support the US guaranteeing missile manufacturers that we will buy new missiles even if the war ends tomorrow to incentivise greater production. I just think the ad played with the numbers until they said what we want them to say.
Source for both quotes: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html
The over 1m stat is a bit of an exaggeration - the more accurate figure is closer to 750,000. See https://cepa.org/article/russias-military-manpower-crunch-will-worsen/
Charitably, 300,000 casualties would be ~40%. Of course it's still very good value for military spending...