this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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[–] lumony 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Lost, huh?

Does that mean casualties? As in, not necessarily deaths?

Russia has lost 1,330 soldiers killed and wounded over the past day alone

I would assume the answer is 'yes.'

Fuck I hate the propaganda reporting on both sides.

[–] seejur@lemmy.world 17 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Including wounded is the official definition of lost, always been. No need to call propaganda, it simply how is defined.

[–] lumony 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"Russia suffered x casualties in y time."

Just like prices ending in .99, a significant amount of useful idiots are going to look at the word "lost" and assume it means killed.

That's how propaganda works and it shouldn't have to be spelled out for you.

[–] seejur@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

Lost means "not able to fight". If they lose a leg, they might be alive, but not very useful in the battlefield. Therefore the soldier, not the human, is lost.

Most of it it's because in military setting, those two are equivalent, sine the only thing they care is about how many abled bodies they have available for the meat grinder.

[–] lumony 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Just like prices ending in .99, a significant amount of useful idiots are going to look at the word “lost” and assume it means killed.

[–] seejur@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

What I meant is:

Propaganda is writing 0.99 with the intention of tricking people into buying. Note here to purpose of writing 99 is used.

Casualties was born from the necessity of generals to know how many troops are available. There is no psychological trick in there. Just because civilians misinterpret it does not mean there is a propagandistic goal hidden somewhere.

See the difference?

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

A bit over one third of these losses are deaths.

Typically in wars it's about one sixth, and that is also approximately Ukraine's ratio as well. For the Russia the number is very different because they don't care for their wounded – many of the wounded are converted to dead through inexistence of medical care.

So, 900 000 Russian losses equals a bit over 300 000 dead orcs/roaches/whateveryoucallthem.

The thing is, for the war it doesn't really have much meaning whether the loss is through death or a serious wound. It's one soldier less all the same.

[–] lumony 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The thing is, for the war it doesn’t really have much meaning whether the loss is through death or a serious wound.

Not true. A soldier that's killed isn't going back home to his family. He'll never have kids. He'll never contribute to the economy ever again.

Trying to say kills don't matter in a war is retarded.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 17 hours ago

I largely agree with you on that.

But, that depends on who is using the numbers. For immediate military use it is not important what happens after the war. For the general who is planning a war strategy, what matters is how much the army is losing manpower. For the society it does matter whether the lost manpower is dead or just missing one arm, but for the war strategy it doesn't.

Albeit, I do somewhat disagree with this myself. I keep arguing that although the total military losses of Ukraine are close to those of the Russia, it makes a huge difference that the number of dead soldiers is smaller even in proportion to Ukraine's population than the number of dead Russian soldiers is in proportion to the Russia's population. It also seems that Ukraine's recruitment capacity (in absolute numbers) is at least on par with that of the Russia and it's unclear if its maximum capacity has even been reached.

Ukrainian soldiers seem to always receive decent prosthetics that enable them to remain in working life and be with their families. In that case it is not a huge loss for the society that a soldier has got seriously wounded. If the risk of death was as high as that of Russians', there would be (even) less motivation to enlist.

But, be it like this or that, the reality is that the common practice in wars is to assume it makes no difference whether the lost soldier is dead or crippled, and because of that, they typically count military losses, not military deaths. Regardless of how retarded that is.