Any news about Kononovich brothers and other imprisoned CPU members?

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/kononovich-brothers-ukrainian-communist-youth-leaders-confirmed-to-be-alive/

Obviously, understanding what's going on will put you in jail there...or worse

Soaring Death Toll Gives Grim Insight Into Russian Tactics

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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ukraine-russia-casualties.html
WASHINGTON — Moscow is sending poorly trained recruits, including convicts, to the front lines in eastern Ukraine to pave the way for more seasoned fighters, U.S. and allied officials say.

The number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000, a stark symbol of just how badly President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion has gone, according to American and other Western officials.

While the officials caution that casualties are notoriously difficult to estimate, particularly because Moscow is believed to routinely undercount its war dead and injured, they say the slaughter from fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and the town of Soledar has ballooned what was already a heavy toll.

With Moscow desperate for a major battlefield victory and viewing Bakhmut as the key to seizing the entire eastern Donbas area, the Russian military has sent poorly trained recruits and former convicts to the front lines, straight into the path of Ukrainian shelling and machine guns. The result, American officials say, has been hundreds of troops killed or injured a day.

Russia analysts say that the loss of life is unlikely to be a deterrent to Mr. Putin’s war aims. He has no political opposition at home and has framed the war as the kind of struggle the country faced in World War II, when more than 8 million Soviet troops died. U.S. officials have said that they believe that Mr. Putin can sustain hundreds of thousands of casualties in Ukraine, although higher numbers could cut into his political support.

Ukraine’s casualty figures are also difficult to ascertain, given Kyiv’s reluctance to disclose its own wartime losses. But in Bakhmut, hundreds of Ukrainian troops have been wounded and killed daily at times as well, officials said. Better trained infantry formations are kept in reserve to safeguard them, while lesser prepared troops, such as those in the territorial defense units, are kept on the front line and bear the brunt of shelling.

The last public Biden administration estimate of casualties came last November, when Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that more than 100,000 troops on each side had been killed and wounded since the war began. At the time, officials said privately that the numbers were closer to 120,000.

“I would say it’s significantly well over 100,000 now,” General Milley said at a news conference last month in Germany, adding that the Russian toll included “regular military, and also their mercenaries in the Wagner Group.”

Let's see here...

Russia's economy and relationship development within BRICS has never gone better thanks to the sanctions, so far the main losses in the war have been storm-troopers from their penal system, and they've put and end to some of the ethnic cleansing of the Ukro-nazi's thus showing their people that there is yet another tangible reason to support the govt.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and estimate that a LOT of people in Russia think that the action so far has been 'worth it'.

I certainly hope that if a country I care about is ever in a struggle, the enemy will be as incompetent as the 'collective West' has been through this whole thing, though it remains unclear exactly how much of an enemy of Russia they actually are.  Some say that 'the Russians' played opossum for a two or three decades while they installed their operatives in the West.  Looks entirely possible to me.

Yep, numbers are not to be ignored that is for sure. You certainly need a number of troops in the ground to hold a territory and that is clear to everyone. A different matter is driving an offensive action without the right support of combined arms -  it is the closes to trying to run towards a machine gun with 200 people in the hope that 10 will make it there. On paper, it works, 10 people get to the machine gun and kill the operators. In reality, the 200 guys may choose to shoot the officers by the back.

Putin is certainly ready to use (others) lives, but there may be a point in which the lower ranks stop accepting being cannon fodder.


Yet the RF GDP drops and dropsssss....... It seems to me that Putin would be a CIA operative and a brilliant one.

There is no accurate way to measure Russian GDP. You can't use standard banking measurements, because Russia is exporting and and growing in other ways. Standard measurements don't work because of the sanctions.

For example, if there is a 100 acre farm in the US, and the farm doesn't produce much if any product to sell to the American market, does that mean the farm dies? Not necessarily. After all, 100 acres is large enough to feed the family of 6 that owns it, plus a whole bunch of families in the area. Yet, none of that will be counted as part of the GDP for that farm, because they are not in the system of counting that way.

Russia is similar. They are simply not operating GDP-wise in the way that the West counts GDP. This might mean that they are even more successful in ways that the West doesn't measure. And actually, that seems to be the way it is.

Your usual confusion about economy and general lack of knowledge at full-throttle again. There is no way of accurately measuring any GDP, all of them are through indirect measures. Funds, credit and investment agencies routinely estimate growth and economy in many countries through indirect measures such as movement in seaports, exports, imports, traffic, power consumption... there is little doubt about what is happening to the RF economy.

GDP is GDP, it is not about how "the west" counts it nor is about "growing in a different way". You are so used to using sources that distort reality and make things "an opinion" when there are hard facts that you think you can talk your way out of an economic crisis - bad news is you can't, the economy does not care about excuses.

Your kind of measurement of the Russian economy is blinding you to what is really happening. The world is still way to big to sanction any major country out of it. Russia is simply going elsewhere in its trade with other nations (BRICS), and many countries are turning to Russia in new ways, for trade.

One major point is, Russia doesn't need trade with other nations. All they need is further internal development. They know this. War preparations, and the sanctions, are actually helping them develop their internal trade.

^^^ Need a job? Hire on in Russia. Good pay. With the West pushing, more workers needed..