До Здоровье, Komrades!
Today is May 9, the glorious 77th anniversary of (checks notes)...
...of the second capitulation ceremony by the Nazis, held due to a temper tantrum thrown by a jealous Josef Stalin who could not handle the fact that they had already signed a May 8 capitulation to the American and British forces under the command of General Eisenhower.
...
...Hm. Well this is awkward.
Joking aside, every Russian is raised "knowing" that May 9 is "Victory Day," a celebration of the day the Soviet Red Army (with its American-made tanks and rifles, donated by American generosity and operated by soldiers who only survived the collectivization-driven famine of the '30's due to American food donations) gloriously liberated Eastern Europe from the terror of the Nazi Occupation and brought them the "bounteous glory" of life under Soviet domination.
In Soviet Russia, death camp no longer just for Jews!
As evidence of this claim (namely, that the USSR was the real driving force behind the Allied victory in World War 2), they point to death toll statistics. The Americans lost 552,117 men in the European theater of war; the British, 384,000. But the Soviet Union lost 8.6 million of its soldiers in WW2 (some estimates say it's closer to 10 million), a number greater than America's combined losses in every war they've ever fought in! And from this fact, Moscow derives their claims of having "saved the world from Fascism," a claim echoed by North America's own Communist mouthpiece, the Washington Post.
It seems, nobody bothered to inform the Kremlin that the aim in war is to kill the other side's soldiers.
Well, 77 years later, the soldiers of the Kremlin (I'd love to call them "Kremlings" but unfortunately Rare Inc. copyrighted that term to use on a bunch of crocodiles) are still trying to "save the world" from "Nazis" that only exist in their minds. And they have the same attitude toward fighting the imaginary "Nazis" that they had when fighting the real ones. That is, "the winner is the guy who loses the most troops."
And by that definition of "victory," there's no denying that man, oh, man, Russia is kicking ass in Ukraine!
By The Numbers
In 75 days of war in Ukraine, Russia has had 25,650 of its soldiers killed.
This doesn't include severed limbs, lost eyes, or cancer from radiation sickness due to camping out at Chernobyl. It also doesn't include POW's or deserters. This only includes the number of Russian soldiers who have died in battle. That's an average of 342 Russian soldiers per day who are going home as Cargo 200 (or not going home at all). Ukraine, by my most recent information (which I'll admit is half a week old) has lost about 1400 soldiers in the same time frame. In other words, Ukraine's troops are inflicting an 18-to-1 kill ratio on Russia.
For perspective, America was in Iraq for 10 years, during which we lost 4550 government troops and 3793 mercenaries. In 20 years in Afghanistan, we lost 2401 soldiers. Both of those wars combined cost us 13,443 lives. Russia has lost nearly double that number, in 75 days. In 15 years in Vietnam, widely regarded as America's "biggest defeat," we lost 58,220 men. Russia has lost nearly half of that number, in 75 days. To be fair though Russia has attempted to balance this out by killing some 21,000 civilians, during their 2 month occupation of Mariupol. For further perspective, when the Nazis occupied Mariupol, they killed roughly half that number in two years.
It's a bit awkward when the "De-Nazifiers" kill more civilians than the Nazis did, isn't it?
Of Russia's losses, 10 were generals. That's an average of a dead general every 7.5 days (and they managed to get their Minister of Defense wounded in combat, a feat unequaled in any war that I am aware of). In both theaters of the Global War on terror, America lost a grand total of ONE general: Major General Harold Green (2014), and I'm not aware of a single other major power that has lost a general in combat since WW2.
In the first 75 days of the war, Russia has lost 199 fighter jets (including two of their supposedly "invincible" Su-30 Flankers), 158 helicopters, and a jaw-dropping 1145 tanks (including two of their "next generation" T-90's). In ten years in Iraq (a country whose military budget dwarfed that of Ukraine), the US lost 80 tanks, 18 fighter jets and 109 helicopters. And Ukraine? Well... they're actually gaining more tanks than they're losing.
And of course, the crowning achievement of Russia's operation in Ukraine, a "victory" Russians will commemorate for ages, was the sinking of the Black Sea Fleet's flagship, Missile Cruiser Moskva (the Russian word for "Moscow," symbolically enough). Not only was this the first time a major surface combatant was sunk in combat since the British-Argentinian War, and not only is it the largest vessel by tonnage to be destroyed since WW2, but this marks the first time in recorded Human history that a flagship was sunk by a country that doesn't even have a navy. And of course, the Creme de la Kremlin of the entire situation is that the Moskva, whose stated purpose was to protect the Black Sea Fleet from advanced enemy missiles, was sunk by a Ukrainian "Neptune," a subsonic missile.
Truly, Russia, we stand in awe of your military prowess. Never, in all my study of history, have I witnessed an army destroyed as speedily or ruthlessly as Russia is destroying the, eh...
...the Russian Army.
