“When they came for me, there was nobody left to help.”

In Ukrainian cats (кіт / kit) and whales (кит / kyt) are the same thing, if you ask my ears. As are being hungry (голодний / holodnyj) and cold (холодний / kholodnyj).

I can never know if their whale is hungry or if their cat feels cold.

Regarding difference in vowel length… Use a machine translator of your choice and translate these two phrases from Finnish to your mother tongue:

• Tapaan sinut.
• Tapan sinut.

Safe travels!

People keep repeating that we were promised the sanctions would have an almost immediate effect. Could someone tell me where that promise was made?

I don’t think that was ever promised, really.

The paper is a screengrab from this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ERkPYntsPLU

From a farmer who had a donkey? Those are animals that exist. I don’t really know why people have donkeys, but for a reason or another, they do. And are able to sell them.

Maybe someone has them just as a hobby, like other people have horses? Not a common thing, that’s for sure, but a phenomenon that can exist.

Also, you can see the donkey on the video, so I’d say it does exist.

According to this, the French intelligence assumes the Russian artillery shell production to be 3,7 million per year. That translates to quite precisely 10 000 shells per day. Here’s the image that shows the numbers:

There’s indeed been a campaign for destroying the Russian logistics. A lot of trucks have been targeted in the last week or so.

Where does Musk’s money actually come from? How big part of it comes from Tesla? How much from SpaceX and how much from Starlink? What else do Musk’s companies do?

I’m just wondering: How long will he still be the richest person on Earth? And once he’s not, what will Trump think of him?

This looks like an exercise you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. Jump left, jump front, jump right, dive down. Until the end of your days about 25 seconds later.

But, maybe it helps the soldiers feel safe, so they are less likely to revolt before it’s too late?

Hm… A brigade consists of 3000 to 7000 soldiers. And the article says “many” have one or several amputees. That would mean something between 1 in 7000 and 5 in 3000. Yeah, that’s in the ballpark of a tenth of a percent or a hundredth of a percent. True, not terribly significant. Though, many of them are probably good trainers!

It’s a very different thing to give the amputee crutches and to give them high-quality prosthetics. The Ukrainians you refer to as “cripples” aren’t really cripples, because they can move almost normally. Also, they are used very differently: Russian troops need to advance on foot, Ukrainian troops need to arrive to a location in a vehicle and stay to defend it.

I wouldn’t say the two cases are very similar at all.

This is actually very important news that is contrary to what I have thought! The Russia mostly is not able to give prostethic legs to its wounded soldiers, Ukraine is. That changes the military loss ratios dramatically!

The ratio of total military losses between Ukraine and the Russia has been around 1:2½, while the ratio between populations is 1:3½. However, the ratio between dead is 1:4½. Anything where the ratio is smaller than the population ratio is favouring Ukraine. Now, if a sizable amount of the non-dead military losses in Ukraine are able to return to duty, then a large share of those are not military losses at all! That would mean that even in the number of military losses including the wounded Ukraine is doing better than the Russia. What share of the “irrecoverable” wounds are losses of limbs? Does anyone know?

For the Russia it’s about 1:2½, and getting worse, for Ukraine it is currently around 1:4 or 1:5.

In casualties as in military losses Ukraine is doing quite badly: Ukraine has lost some 300 000 as dead and wounded, while the Russia has lost around 800 000 as dead and wounded. The population difference is 1:3½, and the difference in total military losses is 1:2½. That means, Ukraine is losing a slightly larger share of its population as military casualties than the Russia is.

However… Neither side is going to run out of population anytime soon. Ukrainian soldiers go to the front, eventually maybe get wounded and return home one leg poorer. Their children will not have to live with their father, only without an organic right leg of the father. And for the Russian side, the deaths are a much bigger proportion of the population. There the ratio is around 1:4½, and that one favours Ukraine.

If a person is measuring ground gained in this war, he does not understand the war very much at all. Neither side is trying to gain ground. Both sides are trying to incur as much losses to the enemy as possible. The Russia because they need to keep the gore to the maximum in order to convince the west to stop supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine, because if the Russia’s losses drop under 1000 per month, they will be able to start training their soldiers, which will make a huge difference in their dangerousness. The Russia knows very well that it will never take over Ukraine with the current speed of advancing. Remember, in year 2024 the Russia was gaining ground faster than expected. And in year 2024 they managed to gain 0.7 % of Ukraine’s total territory. Less, if you take the Kursk province’s happenings into account. 0.7 % is strategically meaninglessly little.

Artillery shell production is currently about twice as high in the Russia as it’s in the west. But when you take into account that to hit a specific target, the very inaccurate Russian artillery needs to shoot about ten times as many rounds as western artillery, the numbers start looking different: For military use, you either should divide the Russia’s artillery shell numbers by ten, or alternatively multiply ours by ten. Depth of reserves… Well, here we come back to casualties and motivations.

• As said, the population ratio is 1:3½.
• The total military casualty ratio is 1:2½, favouring the Russia.
• The military death ratio is 1:4½, favouring Ukraine.

Russian soldiers are in it for the money. The Russia will have useful amounts of money to give to the soldiers for another six to fifteen months, about. After that the motive is gone. Typically, it is easier for the defending party to find soldiers for a war than it is for the aggressor. This is the case in this war as well. This means, when interpreting the casualty ratios, you need to add a multiplier for taking into account that the defender can tap into a larger share of the population than the aggressor can.

Remember, Ukrainians are sending to the front less than a fifth of what they could, if we compare with Finland. Finland has a population of 5,6 million and we have about one million soldiers ready to serve within some months of the begin of a hypothetical war. Each one of them has received a top-class military training and each one has a specific place in a specific unit in the army should a war break. Ukraine has about the same size army as that, even though they have over 40 million people. The unwillingness to join the front is a surprising feature, at least from a Finnish perspective, but also a result of a lack of motivation. If the scales were to tip in the favour of the Russia, Ukrainians would get scared and more would be ready to help their country. When looking at the very large difficulties Ukraine has with conscription, you need to take this into account. The problem is of a type that solves itself. It’s extremely unfair towards the soldiers at the front that they never get relieved. And idiotic that people don’t want to join the army because soldiers never get relieved from the front … because there are not enough people ready to go to the front. And, from my experience living in Ukraine, I would say that this won’t change. They will remain understaffed as long as the war will go on, but always precisely at the limit where they can still keep scraping on.

Ukraine’s army won’t be disappearing anytime soon, the west is effortlessly able to pay all of Ukraine’s budget indefinitely if it so wishes and the Russia is not able to gain any ground. The Russia’s goals are to cause Ukraine to collapse economically or its army to collapse from lack of manpower, and neither of those can happen. At the same time, the Russian economy, and therefore military, have at max one year time left. After that they will have nothing to use for stopping Ukraine from reclaiming its territories.

EDIT: I want to add: While the Ukrainians’ readiness to defend their country is lower than Finns’, that’s mostly because Finland has an exceptionally high readiness for that. If you compare with Germany or France, the Ukrainians look extremely willing to go to the front. What I wanted to say is that although their willingness is very high, there is still a lot of place for improvement!

Since when is mandatory conscription “kidnapping”?

If it’s a year later, then it is. The Russia won’t be able to recruit soldiers after its economy collapses. They are in for salary and death compensation that is defined in Rubles. Once the Ruble compensation loses its value, relatives get less motivated for letting their sons go to the front. And when the 2000$ salary becones a 100 $ salary, nobody goes to war for that money.

Without soldiers the front cannot be kept.

the Russia has been steadily and slowly gaining territory over the last year with a speed of 0.7 % of Ukraine’s territory per year. Which is not strategically relevant. Strategically seen, the Russia has not advanced.

I don’t really see China starting to actively cover the Russian budget. That would jeopardize China’s trade with Europe.

The Russia’s strategy has been to outlast Ukraine’s supporters will to support Ukraine. That will never happen, unless the voices making the fake claims about time being on the Russia’s side are given too much space. Helping Ukraine is so much cheaper than the costs that incur if the Russia takes over Ukraine that there is no logical reason for the EU to end Ukraine’s support ever. Even if some countries were to withdraw their support, enough will retain it to keep Ukraine’s head over water.

The Russian economy will collapse, sooner or later.

Absolutely!

But of course the US leadership understood that this is a consequence of asking EU to refrain from doing that kind of stuff. Would still have been better for USA if Europe would have done much more, so the demands make sense. And I agree that more should have been done!

Yup. And that means the Russia will be losing huge amounts of troops and equipment without gaining anything from it. The Ukrainian economy is very small, I think about the size of Slovakia’s economy. The EU can hold Ukraine’s economy up as long as it wants to. Nobody is doing the same for the Russia.

If the Russia had to switch to defending territory without gaining anything more, how would it push for a victory before its economy collapsing?