More than a year after President Vladimir Putin summoned 300,000 draftees to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine, some of their families are starting to demand that they come home.
    • phoneymouse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      53·
      11 months ago

      Isn’t it like 350k deployed and 315k dead? Those are insane numbers.

      Edit: 315k killed and wounded… not sure of the ratio

      • space@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        532·
        11 months ago

        Afaik, it’s 315k casualties, not deaths, which basically means “unable to serve”. This includes dead, injured, captured, deserted etc. Also keep in mind that this is an Ukrainian estimate which might be inflated.

      • Nythos@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        26·
        11 months ago

        The accuracy of these numbers is always going to be debatable and the true numbers likely never known but this is what Ukraine is saying what Russian losses are like

        • GONADS125@lemmy.worldEnglish
          321·
          11 months ago

          Their stockpiles and equipment were neglected over years. They once held a significant strength in their military. But it was systemic corruption that eroded their status as a military superpower. That’s clearly a myth at this point, no doubt…

          • MotoAsh@lemmy.worldEnglish
            133·
            11 months ago

            I mean, they both have/had rampant corruption and cronyism, so they aren’t actually that different. Russia just stopped pretending to be communist.

            • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
              162·
              11 months ago

              I think they are referring to the relative societal priority of maintaining a large modern fighting force. USSR was investing and developing bleeding edge weapons tech. Russia has just been sitting on that same stockpile.

              • MotoAsh@lemmy.worldEnglish
                65·
                11 months ago

                Ehhhh… if you look up the history, they weren’t THAT successfully industrious. They had LOTS of engineering screwups all in the name of the motherland. They helped win the war NOT with rampant successful technological advancement, but by throwing insane numbers of people towards Germany.

                Not to say they had none, just that there were many, many flaws and shortcutted projects that were never the less still greenlit to much disaster and economic waste.

                • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  8·
                  11 months ago

                  I’m talking about the 60/70s where they were legitimately on par (arguably more successful) with their space-tech. Advanced weapons and space-tech are absolutely linked, the entire space race was a thin facade over demonstrating the capacity to deploy novel weapons systems. And, I can’t stress this enough, the USSR dominated in that realm.

                  I guess what I’m saying is that modern day Russia being a paper tiger is pretty valid… This has been the consensus for a long time in the West. Everything that we are seeing aligns with the rational assessment of military professionals.

                  That doesn’t mean this has ALWAYS been the case. The assessments of those professionals at the time, was that the Soviet military in the 60s-70s had the capacity to pose a legitimate military threat to the western world.

                • GiveMemes@jlai.luEnglish
                  115·
                  11 months ago

                  Sorry are you referring to WWII in a discussion about the cold war, which really wouldn’t ramp up for at least 5 years afterwards and would be mostly characterized by the 60s-80s and saying “if you look at the history”??

                  Maybe you should take a gander at some history books buddy, it’s not like 10 years between medieval wars where technology would barely have inched forward, instead being an age of innovation where we went from planes to space travel in <50 years with the Soviet engineering beating the US at 2 out of 3 steps of the space race lmao.

                  Not to say the soviet Union was some glorious infallible place or anuthing, I just think your comment is absurd and kinda irrelevant.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          The Soviet Union included a dozen nations not held by Russia today (one of whom was Ukraine), and Russia has suffered rampant corruption and neglect since the fall of the union 30 years ago

        • mochisuki@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          What we had was an excuse to spend unlimited money on weapons, destabilizing anti-business foreign governments, and demonizing unions and social programs.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldEnglish
    262·
    11 months ago

    This is what happened during their Afghanistan. The women started protesting.

    • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      16·
      11 months ago

      Yep and to try and prevent that this time they drew disproportionate numbers from the arse end of nowhere. Hopefully we hit some kind of tipping point soon.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 months ago

        I think that might be a double edged sword. They aren’t central to the country, sure, but being more remote also makes it easier for them to take and hold territory in a rebellion.

  • lad@programming.devEnglish
    221·
    11 months ago

    As far as I know it’s not that they have just now started demanding this, it’s that now their demands have been blatantly and openly ignored and handwaved away. The frustration is really high already.

    I heard some people believe this to be a tipping point but I am afraid to believe that this will affect anything