r/worldnews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 21h ago

Russia/Ukraine ‘We Were Mistaken’: Putin Admits Russia Was Unprepared for Ukrainian Strikes on Oil Refineries

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/83674
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u/nickiter 16h ago

I mean, they've also killed several hundred thousand people and done $600B in damage. And it only cost them 1.4M of their own people!

God, those numbers. It's incredible that the world tolerates this. Fucking nukes. They may not be a superpower, but they do have millions of men ready to be sacrificed at the altar of Putin's greater-Russia fantasy.

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u/bstiglets 13h ago

The average life span of a Russian soldier deployed to Ukraine is 35 minutes. I gotta tell you, I’ve watched drone footage of soldiers being singled out and eliminated. Whenever the final image is of a Russian looking directly into the drone’s camera, it’s absolutely chilling.

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u/nickiter 13h ago

That's during an active frontline assault.

But yeah, the fighting in Ukraine has been incredibly bloody. Urban environments along with the advent of drones ... Slaughterhouses.

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u/bstiglets 12h ago

You think Russia would have an understanding of the difficulties of asymmetrical warfare

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u/Ok-Relief-462 3h ago

They have an understanding of the difficulties, as do most nations; he just made the often repeated mistake of assuming you wouldn’t have to deal with an asymmetric conflict. Putin was working on the assumption that this Ukraine was the same one that rolled over in 2014 with crimea

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u/Lutrana 4h ago

It’s still, like, a month or less after signing.

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u/Ultrasonic-Sawyer 10h ago

Thats 35 minutes active front line, as somebody else indicated. 

That number is scarily very likely surpassed by time from "conscription" to first case of physical and / or sexual abuse by a superior, which is a disgustingly common practice in the Russian military.  

For some of them, that drone strikes may be preferable. 

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u/CicadaFit9756 9h ago

Didn't I once hear that Russians protesting this war had a terrible punishment meant to silence dissent? They were conscripted into the military!

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u/Sufficientinname 11h ago

Chilling and then funny 😁

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u/abombSFCA 13h ago

1.4M??? Enlisted or casualties?

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u/Mushie101 13h ago edited 9h ago

That number is Russians (and mercenaries from Africa, India and nth Korea ) that are either dead or severely wounded (like missing limbs and can no longer fight). If I recall correctly the estimate is 2/3 dead 1/3 wounded.

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u/GrimpenMar 12h ago

Russia dead:injured is worse than WW1 I understand. Drones and the grey zones make medical extraction more difficult. Ukraine puts the effort in, Russia does not.

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u/abombSFCA 11h ago

Wow. I imagine this is not well advertised in Russian homeland.

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u/GrimpenMar 10h ago

Certainly not, and I would assume modern Russia maintains the Soviet tradition of reporting only good news up the chain.

Putin isn't dumb, but he has managed to curate his own information bubble, and it's focused more on his personal survival. Plus, you can't collect the wages for your soldiers after they die.

I have no idea what Putin thinks it's going on, or how out of touch most average Russians are. Judging from all the crying when Moscow got hit, the civilians in the core are competent out of the loop.

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u/Mushie101 9h ago

The average lifespan of a Russian soldier on the front is estimated to be 40 minutes. No this is not advertised.
What is advertised is the families are "offered" USD150k if their husbands die. Of course the chance of actually getting that money is 0.0001%. There have been stories of women chatting up young men, marrying them and then convincing them to goto the front so they can get the payout.

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u/SnooDoggos7915 11h ago

I imagine a lot of the Russians didn’t want to be in the war, because what is the point? …compared to Ukraine fighting for their homes, their people & their land! Long live Ukraine!!!

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u/Funny-Carob-4572 4h ago

Russia send men out with missing limbs for assaults

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u/MakeThySelf 10h ago

That's... roughly 1 dead soldier on Russian side every 2 minutes, for over four years. Every nights sleep is an average of another 200 dead, 100 wounded. Fuck.

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u/nickiter 13h ago

Russian war dead.

Ukraine's lost something like 600,000 people.

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u/distributingthefutur 13h ago

Casualties and dead. They see the soldiers get blown up, but can't be sure they don't survive. That said, there aren't that many wounded returning home. There's no evacuation for the wounded and the salaries and bonuses would have to be paid if they were anything other than 'missing.'

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u/abombSFCA 12h ago

Wow that’s way way way more than I thought.

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u/holyluigi 12h ago

war goes both ways just like propaganda. We don't hear much from Ukraine's losses to not diminish morale or hope.
They are doing good having advantage as defenders but its far from curb stomping russia otherwise the war would have been over. Not to mention how drones might keep this war going for far longer than usual wars.

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u/Mushie101 9h ago

Dont forget Ukraine was not allowed to fire missiles into Russia for a looonng time. There is only so much you can do when you have your hands tied behind your back. Now that they have developed their own long range missiles it is helping, but Russia still have alot of them + they are getting alot of drones from Iran and Nth Korea.

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u/Sasquatch1729 11h ago

First one, then the other

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u/Daoin_Vil 11h ago

The Ukrainians have pivoted strategies, they went from trying to take territory back to conceding territory to slaughter Russians. Their goal now is to kill as many soldiers as possible and to bring the war to the average Russian (by bombing major city’s and taking out the oil refineries). They brought the defender attacker ratio up to 1in5 so for every Ukrainian lost five Russian also gone. They now hold out until Russia is about to take a town or city then they retreat and when the Russians come into the town/city they shell the shit out of them then they send in the air drones to bomb the hide outs and the fpv drones pick off the people not hunkered down. Then they send in the ground drones to clear as many buildings or basements as possible followed by live Ukrainian forces to take prisoners and kill the last of the hold outs.

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u/zetimenvec 10h ago

Casualties on the russian side have been extremely lethal. I forget the numbers thrown around in interviews, but something like 70-90% of injured russian casualties turn into fatalities.

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u/amicaze 13h ago

Ready to be sacrificed for like, wayy less than 10k €.

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u/distributingthefutur 13h ago

They all just get counted as missing so nothing gets paid to the families.

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u/QuarterFantastic6134 12h ago

Well fortunately Russia’s current birthrates are markedly below replacement. Meaning their “human wave” strategy will be harder and harder to use when they don’t have those waves of combat-age not severely disabled males to feed the grinder.

Let’s also be honest most of Russia isn’t that developed it’s a shithole. Meaning it isn’t a particularly huge magnet either for physically talented immigrants so this is also not something they can easily solve by just tweaking immigration policies alone either.

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u/Timely_Truth6267 13h ago

1.4 million. Jesus christ

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u/productzilch 12h ago

Jesus, I had no idea how big the disparity was.

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u/Waveofspring 13h ago

The good news about the invasion of Ukraine is that a lot of oligarchs and other Russian higher-ups are starting to doubt Putin’s leadership since the war has been such a slop.

Even though russia hasn’t truly lost at all, they’ve taken way less territory than predicted and Ukraine has been attacking/damaging Russian territory. And of course troop morale is low. It’s not like they’re fighting nazi invaders this time around.

I doubt Putin’s successor will be any less corrupt but hopefully they will at least back down when it comes to the world stage.

Either way, Russia is a weak shell of its former Soviet past. They are not the main rival anymore, and frankly they haven’t been in a while. But the world is just now realizing this.

Whether or not they get the upper hand in Ukraine, they will never capture the entire country, and I seriously doubt they’ll ever take Kyiv.

Regardless of the outcome, Putin’s war in Ukraine is a complete failure.

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u/WideCranberry4912 13h ago

How do the officers control the troops? Why aren’t the troops just straight gutting the officers and taking the equipment and marching on Moscow?

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u/Life-Significance-33 12h ago

Don't assume they have equipment. There were news reports that new conscription troops are told to find a gun on the dead soldiers in the field.

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u/distributingthefutur 13h ago

It's even worse. The only way they can continue is through Chinese manufacturing. From military hardware to all the domestic consumption through Wild berries, etc., it's all Chinese. China is boiling the frog. They supply them enough to keep going, but not enough to win. Eventually, Russia will be so weak, Chinese business people will just buy everything.

There's already a lot of projects around Lake Baikal in Siberia. The locals can't even get enough men together to do construction so the Chinese bring their own people and equipment in. It's an invasion without a shot being fired.

Russia wanted to build a second pipeline to China. It fell through when the Chinese required Russia to pay for it and to guarantee oil at a ridiculously low price. They smell the desperation.

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u/ABadHistorian 12h ago

China really is just going to sweep in and take the upper north eastern part of Russia when Russia experiences civil unrest within the next ten years. Like clockwork, this sort of stuff happens throughout history.

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u/distributingthefutur 11h ago

People keep saying the Chinese will invade outer Manchuria (Vladivostok) to reclaim it, but why bother? They can do what the Russians do. Eventually, Siberia and the east will be full of Chinese, Chinese money and Chinese culture. They'll help them succeed from Russia. China will be 'obligated' to defend them to protect the Chinese people there.

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u/ABadHistorian 11h ago

They don't need to invade to invade. They'll do an Austria - they'll be "welcomed in" when Russia's heartlands are full of chaos.

But I wouldn't be surprised if China invades somewhere. It has 20 million unmarried men, that untapped rage and aggression will be unleashed somewhere. Even if just as a pressure release valve.

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u/ABadHistorian 9h ago

Your comment was deleted, so I can't see your end/point.

But I gather you are disagreeing with me. Rather than argue, let me just say I do not want war, and I think the historical record speaks for itself regardless of where or what these men are doing.

Unmarried men in large numbers lead to chaos. Perhaps, as I suspect your point is trying to make, these men will be unable to unify to cause chaos in China. From my online contacts, I highly doubt that to be true. I used to mod with several chinese gamers, and they had a lot to say about the situation there in online-game chats that are not easily monitored by their services, and I know first hand they use a lot of them for communication purposes. There is a LOT of unrest in China among the male population 20-40 age bracket right now, over women, wage payment (wages routinely getting held back from people, so that wages are in some places functioning more like credit).

China may want war to get rid of these men, or to try to reverse the decline in society by providing an outside enemy.

I unfortunately, would never bet against a nation of autocrats not seeing war as a viable option.

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u/Spirited_Ingenuity89 8h ago

China has its own massive demographics problems. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and other demographers are trying to figure out how much the current population has been over counted. They’re thinking it’s in the hundreds of millions.

Even without adjusting the current population numbers, they’re set to lose 60% of their population by the end of the century.

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u/Jolly_Plantain4429 12h ago

Putin might actually get deposed off of this loss, his strong man persona has crumbled and he lost a war that usually leads regime change.

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u/Xigua2001 12h ago

I mean. That’s why they said the nukes were ok back then. Both the United States and Japan agreed more would have died on both sides with the war dragging on if the nukes weren’t used.

Using nukes is a last resort to save more lives… which is weird to say but has held true in their use so far, as they haven’t yet been abused… and hopefully won’t be.

The death tool this war has had and is continuing to have is horrendous. :(

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u/Neomataza 11h ago

Fucking nukes

Proof of having nukes in 1990, but only have been saber rattling since then. With how everything else in their possession deteriorated and malfunctioned, they may or may not be a nuclear threat anymore, but nobody wants to call the bluff.

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u/StormFast524 12h ago

Shows how
Stupid they really are

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u/xShoresy 4h ago

Vast majority of those are prison clean outs and conscripts going in with not even second rate hand me downs from the Russian Salvation Army. They definitely didn't expect the fight that would be put up, but the result is nowhere near a direct reflection of Russian military power. Not to mention this is kind of the only look we've had since WW2 of two actual first world powers going at it large scale. Besides, if we hadn't shovelled a trillion dollars in American assets to em in the first week alone, Putin would be bulldozing Kyiv to build a new super mall.