Putin continues to grind his own forces down, dug into hopeless trenches and holes, weakening Russian national security by the day.
Russian troops recently suffered their worst month for casualties since the country’s war with Ukraine began almost three years ago, the head of Britain’s armed forces said on Sunday.
At this rate perhaps the North Korean detachment of 12,000 would be eliminated in just one week.
North Korean soldiers ‘gun down Russian comrades’ in new frontline humiliation for Putin
Maybe even faster.
The rising war tragedy toll for Russia is now upwards of 700,000.
British defense intelligence estimates Russia has likely suffered more than 696,000 losses since the start of the full-scale invasion, a figure in line with Ukraine’s current total figure of 707,540 reported on Nov. 9.
Russia also lost nearly 20 armored fighting vehicles in just one day of October, bringing the total loss of these machines reported to 18,450.
Never forget that Russia’s initial 2022 invasion plan appeared based on a swift 3-day capture of Kyiv and regime change, drawing from their 2014 Crimea experience. Instead, they’re mired in what’s becoming a grinding positional war of attrition more reminiscent of WWI trenches than modern maneuver warfare.
Some historical context is perhaps needed:
The Soviet-Afghan War lasted 9 years and saw ~15,000 Soviet deaths before withdrawal
The Chechen Wars cost Russia roughly 11,000 troops over 10 years
WWI trench warfare lasted 4 years with massive casualties
And on those points, here’s how
Russia is so much worse off in their current quagmire:
Suffering casualties at far higher rate than those previous conflicts
Unlike Afghanistan, this is depleting their core military strength on their own border
Lost more equipment in 2 years than the USSR lost in 10 years in Afghanistan
Sanctions and brain drain create compounding long-term weaknesses
Now the question becomes who can predict the key sustainability factors:
Military: Throwing trained personnel into a meat grinder faster than they can replace them
With typical cheeky tone of the independent local publisher, Inside Croyden tells of a spook who served British policy to inject Franco into position for European fascism to spread.
Franco had been exiled to the Canaries by the elected government of the Spanish Republic, who didn’t trust him – with good reason, as it turned out. Once airlifted to Morocco [secretly by a British spy named Pollard], the general took command of Spain’s elite Army of Africa and launched a fascist-backed military uprising that sparked the Spanish Civil War. […]
[Britain’s subsequent public] policy of “non-intervention” was meant to look even-handed. In reality it meant that the Spanish Republic couldn’t buy arms to defend itself, while Germany’s Hitler and Italy’s Mussolini did all they could to help Franco.
After Guernica, Major Pollard had a letter published in The Times in which he said that targeting the town was “perfectly legitimate”, because it was claimed to be a centre of small arms manufacture, one which supplied weapons to terrorists.
In the same letter, Pollard said that the Basques who supported the Spanish Republic were “simply reaping what they have sown”.
In the years after the war, Pollard and his pilot, Cecil Bebb, were personally decorated by Franco, awarding them fascist Spain’s highest military honour, the Imperial Order of the Yoke and Arrows.
The list of other recipients of that same award is a rogues’ gallery of war criminals, from Hitler to Himmler and from Mussolini to Von Rippentrop.
Pollard and Bebb flew from Croyden airport, thus the “local” aspect to the story.
The Pollard and Bebb would be an interesting name for a London public house, perhaps one that could be used to attract and infiltrate groups today attempting to be fascist.
It sounds better than the Musk and Thiel, anyway…
Much like Elon Musk, Major Pollard apparently was known for being deeply racist and a fascist sympathizer, let alone a horrible mess to work with.
His superiors considered that whilst there were ‘certain jobs’ at which Pollard could ‘do well’ these skills were overshadowed by his reputation for being at best ‘most indiscreet’ and, when combined with money and drink, ‘definitely unreliable.’ His further involvement in [WWII] was therefore deemed ‘fatal’.
On a related note, that paper’s fascinating local retelling of how British elites gleefully helped Franco and Hitler take power allegedly has been censored by Facebook.
First, you have to wonder just how many more people must die (as dutifully reported by TeslaDeaths.com) before Tesla is properly banned from public roads?
Tesla Deaths Per Year
Source: TeslaDeaths.com
Remember, the Ford Pinto had killed around 25 people (as told by Ford) when the entire country had to shift into gear in order to regulate against safety design negligence by car makers.
Front doors jam shut preventing escape or rescue from a burning car? That sounds just like a Tesla! How are they legal?
I mean do we expect a market to somehow adjust itself today such that people stop owning Tesla, as well as stop riding in and around them? I have doubts about such consumer self-correction as I still weekly read news from grieving families who say, too late, they never understood the real risk of their loved ones being burned alive, hit head-on or run over by Tesla.
And on this tragic note about the exploding number of deaths in defective cars, which seem to only be stopped with regulation, Tesla has many shockingly old safety design defects. Consider for comparison an assorted list of high safety models, from far better engineered brands.
Acura MDX four-wheel-drive
Audi Q5 four-wheel-drive
Chevrolet Traverse four-wheel-drive
Lexus RX 350 four-wheel-drive
Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan four-wheel-drive
Porsche Macan
Subaru Ascent
Toyota C-HR
Volvo XC60 four-wheel-drive
There are even more options than these, because it’s apparently easy to post better safety results than the high-priced low-quality “luxury” Tesla. This reference is only to show many cars achieve extremely low death rates in the latest real world results (NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System). In other words, no Tesla achieves what others can.
Source: IIHS
The IIHS emphasizes another angle on the data as well. They say marketing of the technology has as much to do with high death tolls as the designs themselves, or perhaps even more impact.
The explanation may lie in the image of the vehicles. Luxury cars are associated with ease and comfort. In contrast, the [most deaths] on this list are associated with [dangerous behavior suggestions that] influence how they’re driven. […] Marketing for the Dodge Charger HEMI, for example, focuses on its “ground-shaking” power, its acceleration “bolting off the line” and its “racing-inspired” high-performance brakes, while the Chevrolet Camaro promises buyers the ability to “dominate on the daily” with an “extreme track performance package” and the Ford Mustang offers “adrenaline chasers” the power to “keep ahead of the pack.”
Tesla’s infamously thoughtless “appetite for destruction” strangely isn’t mentioned in this paragraph, even though the brand is regularly posting dangerous behavior suggestions… such as their CEO boasting to customers that “accidents probably won’t happen” when they drive drunk or fall asleep at the wheel.
The latest NHTSA formal defect investigation letter to Tesla that the company must stop false advertising of “driverless” capabilities seems to fit. Tesla might be the most causal relationship of all, given repeated fraudulent safety statements leading directly to high death rates. I’d still argue Tesla engineering defects are a significant factor, however. No other brand has been reporting multiple cases of everyone inside being burned to death (again and again), for one obvious example, given the notorious “death trap” design defect that seals Tesla doors shut after a crash.
Are you driving the deadliest car in the world?
To put it another way, in 1971 a new agency (NHTSA) was pushing the first major safety regulations, against the desires of a hugely popular racist president Nixon. The “pro business” President expressed a list of clear disdains:
Environmental protection (“fighting a delaying action”)
Consumer advocacy (“Naderism”)
Safety regulations (“greatly exaggerated”)
“Environmentalists and consumerism people” who he claimed were “enemies of the system”
Most tellingly, Nixon dehumanized people if they were concerned with the environment, literally calling them animals and a threat:
…we can’t have a completely safe society or safe highways or safe cars and pollution-free and so forth. Or we could have, go back and live like a bunch of damned animals. […] They’re not one damn bit interested in safety or clean air. What they’re interested in is destroying the system.
He went even further to turn his comments racist and target Native Americans, as if to build a “white man” argument against environmental progress:
You see, what it is, too, is that we are, we are now becoming obsessed with the idea that … progress … industrialization, ipso facto, is bad. The great life is to have it like when the Indians were here. You know how the Indians lived? Dirty, filthy, horrible.
And so does anyone really think that the Tesla and Trump Whitehouse will reveal anything different than Ford and Nixon did with the Pinto? Hint: Ralph Nader refers to Tesla as manslaughter.
Transcripts reveal for historians how Nixon fundamentally sided with industry over public safety and environmental concerns, viewing regulation as an attack on business rather than an innovation engine for protection of people. He acted to delay critical safety requirements (like airbags) after meeting with car executives, proving himself to be a corrupt (ultimately criminal) President who dangerously prioritized big corporate short-term interests over sustainable investments and public safety.
