Preparations for the long-rumored Russian offensive? From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:
There is some interesting news on the casualty count in the war in Ukraine.
Ivan Katchanovski translated bits from a Russian language BBC report:
“Based on open sources, the BBC managed to establish the names of 14,709 Russian soldiers who died in the war in Ukraine. Throughout 2022, Russian sources typically reported about 250-300 dead each week. In January, these figures doubled.” #Russia 1/
“But in just two weeks in February, the BBC Russian Service, together with Mediazona (recognized as a “foreign agent” in Russia) and a team of volunteers, managed to confirm the names of 1,679 dead, which is five times more than the usual weekly numbers.” #Ukraine #ukrainewar 2/
The war started in eighths week of 2022. There were thus 44 weeks in the rest of the year. With 300 dead per week the number of Russians killed until the end of 2022 was 13,200. (These numbers likely included the number of Wagner mercenaries killed but probably not those of the Donbas militia.)
The BBC then counts 2,400 killed in January and 1,700 in February.
The total is thus below 20,000 the number Col. MacGregor and others have estimated for the Russian side. The BBC says it estimates that it only catches half of the dead but gives no sound reason why that would be the case.
The daily losses on the Ukrainian side are much higher. The daily clobber list of the Russian Ministry of Defense mentions about 400 Ukrainians killed every day. This is consistent with the numbers Ukraine’s government mentioned last summer and fall.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 