Where is the Russian train taking us?

“Brave Korean recruits undergo training on Russian land” this is roughly how the official Russian media reports about the military contingent arriving from the “brotherly” DPRK… The messages of Telegram war correspondents may differ somewhat from the Z-patriotic media. Military bloggers write more about how the guests “from behind Pyongyang’s barbed wire” have become addicted to the Internet without restrictions and especially to porn without borders. It turns out that there is sex in the DPRK too, and Kim Jong-un’s soldiers are not made of iron…

In anticipation of the “meat” attacks, the clothes of the “tough Korean guys” are gradually changed, they are armed with light small arms such as a machine gun-grenade launcher-80-mm mortar, and are taught a minimum of commands in Russian. But these bastards do not teach the Juche followers the most essential phrases like “don’t shoot”, “I surrender”, “I want to be a war prisoner”, “I am unarmed”. 

Jokes aside, the first batch of the Korean military paupers is 10,000-12,000 people. Additional tranches of Un’s voiceless warriors are possible – no one will dare to disobey, and the benefits for the Kim regime are stunning: missile technology, rice as a river, money in bags of dollars. $ 2,000 a month per snout… Who will receive them is a rhetorical question, Un will not even allow anyone to think about it, everything should go into the coffers of the Korean homeland! So repeated deliveries of “dog-eater personnel” are possible to cover the gaps in Kursk defense and throw them at the Ukrainian machine guns near Kurakhov. 

This is supposedly reinforcement for Russian soldiers, for the stupid and unfortunate Buryats and Dag, for the dull and obedient Bashkorts and Tatars, for all the other indigenous peoples controlled by Russia, dressed in Russian uniforms. But it only seems so. If North Korean reinforcements had arrived two years ago, the effect would have been significant, but as for now… One cannot bring back his dead countrymen, and the thought of exhausting the contracted military and human resources of the Russian Federation somehow suggests itself. Somehow the refrain starts to sound in our heads, “Something went wrong!” Everything is not developing as wonderfully as we are told from TV screens! 

And on the front lines, our countrymen are already grumbling, kind of, “We were deceived, it is time to end!” In numerous video messages from the front, the ordinary soldiers complain that only half or even a third of the original unit (another Bashkort/Tatar/Buryat volunteer battalion) remained. Reinforcements arrive late and do not correspond to the losses, and their level of training is very low. I want to say to these “veteran soldiers”, “Have you not understood yet? In the current practice of conducting combat operations in the Russian Army, trained soldiers are not needed! What is needed is uncomplaining “meat”.” 

How do the Russian Armed Forces fight? First, a fiery shaft of hundreds of guided aerial bombs weighing half a ton to a ton, and ballistic missiles. Then 120-mm mortars, Grads, and other heavy weapons are used, destroying all buildings from the attic to the basement, and the “meat” infantry crawls after them to stake out the ruins for themselves. Who and why should be trained here? The soldier should be intimidated to the point of losing his instinct for self-preservation! Professional officers operate heavy equipment, and the infantry is expendable, lost according to the approved average rates of decline. Contract recruits are not so much soldiers as “seasonal migrant workers” from the times of serfdom. They differ from professional soldiers as a guard’s Berdan rifle in a melon field differs from a Hymars missile!

Before the war, they either did not serve in the army at all, or served back in the Gorbachev-Yeltsin period, and before being sent to the front, they underwent “thorough and effective” 10-day training.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces also have problems with replenishing their personnel, but at least they know what they are fighting for and who they are defending – and not Zelensky at all, and the “Nazi regime” (and even Russian front-line soldiers themselves hardly believe in such things). They are defending their families, fearing a repeat of the tragedies of Bucha, Bakhmut, Kherson. Our “liberators” left a noticeable bloody trail there, one cannot hide this! And another difference between Ukrainian recruits and Russian ones… This is the position of the civil society. They are looking for correct and fair solutions, discussing and arguing with the government, with the authorities, shouting about the need for equal conscription for all segments of the population… in short, they do not want to be a herd of mooing cattle!

And what do we have in the Russian Federation? A herd, just a herd – different in color, but equally stupid sheep, who believe that the main thing is to find a good owner, a good flock and an abundant pasture! And then they stand, hiding their faces in their balaclavas, and in bitter voices ask the shepherd/king to understand the situation and take pity on them. This is the irony of fate, but they can often be pitied and treated humanely… by the Ukrainian Armed Forces officers and the Ukrainians to whom they get as the war prisoners! After all, more than one has already claimed this on camera in an interview, and not only to Ukrainians, but also to neutral journalists – both while in captivity and immediately after the exchange. 

If we talk about numbers, the  Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reports 720,000 losses of the Russian Armed Forces. There are other sources with a different calculation method. For example, the BBC team together with the Mediazona online source and a group of volunteers, using open sources (analysis of Russian cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries), managed to establish the names of 74,014 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As of October 18, the maximum number of dead soldiers from the region as 2,997 was said by the authorities and media of the Republic of Bashkortostan. 

The real losses are obviously much higher. The military experts interviewed suggest that the analysis of Russian cemeteries, war memorials and obituaries may cover from 45% to 65% of the real number of dead. Taking into account the above estimate, the real number of dead on the Russian side may be in the range of 113,900 to 164,500 people. 

The final figure of losses on the Russian side increases significantly if we include to the list those who fought against Ukraine as part of the self-proclaimed “DPR” and “LPR” units – 21,000-23,500 people.

The total number of dead on the Russian side and pro-Russian forces is in the range of 134,900 to 188,000 soldiers, and taking into account the seriously wounded, it can reach from 404,700 to 564,000 people. In other words, up to half a million dead and seriously wounded soldiers could have been out of action. This is not the final result of the work of the BBC group and Russian volunteers – they continue to search for the names of the dead, wounded and missing (the last category was not included in the above estimates at all) servicemen. 

I will express a subjective opinion: the English can be trusted, they, in my observations, can make honest mistakes, but they do not stoop to lies and manipulations.

And then, fellow countrymen, “think for yourselves, judge for yourselves”… Perhaps this will help you answer the question, “Have we boarded the right train, and are we going in the right direction?”