Another measure of fatalities that's frequently used, especially by Simplicius, is the ratio of dead bodies frequently exchanged between the two combatants...That has been running about 10-15 Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian death...And frontline Ukrainian troops have complained that they are getting hit and frequently killed by glide bombs and FBV drones, without ever seeing the enemy...But Western periodicals are pretty much banned from reporting such statistics...
Unfortunately, the primary reason for this disparity is that Ukraine is losing ground (albeit very slowly). Thus, it is Russians to whom the main job of gathering bodies falls. I don't see any way to estimate this effect to get at the actual ratio.
Does the data include Russian recruitment of foreign fighters? Such as in "Lured by Russia, African soldiers end up on deadly front lines of Ukraine war" https://youtu.be/WlhvVmud6n0
This is one of those wars where the numbers are secondary and the psychology of nations is primary.
**"The Price of Will" ☝**
These experts and analysts are, of course, amusing in their misconceptions when they claim that because Russia failed to overpower Ukraine quickly, it thereby exposed its weakness and made the world far less afraid of its military power.
First of all, by making such claims, they are belittling the Ukrainian army. Since the spring of 2022, I have been writing that people should not belittle Russian soldiers, because by doing so they are also belittling Ukrainian soldiers. Fine, perhaps at the beginning of the war, in 2022–23, this still made some psychological sense as a way of convincing Ukrainians that the enemy was not so strong and that victory was entirely possible. But to continue making such claims now, in 2025, is simply foolish.
On the contrary, the enemy should be elevated. Then a draw, or even a defeat, does not feel quite so humiliating, while a victory becomes especially sweet. After all, the war was fought against a STRONG OPPONENT, not a weak one, as certain people on the world political stage continue to claim.
Even losing to a strong opponent is not as humiliating as losing to a weak one.
That was the part of the issue directly concerning Ukraine. Now let us discuss the claim that, because Russia failed to achieve a quick victory in Ukraine, the world has become less afraid of it. In reality, this is complete nonsense, because after a prolonged war, Russia has come to be feared more, not less.
A quick war would not actually have demonstrated Russia’s strength. No one truly knew how strong the Ukrainian army was, especially since in 2014 it had performed, to put it mildly, rather poorly. Had Russia achieved a quick victory, it would have been chalked up not to Russian strength but to Ukrainian weakness.
In other words, a rapid Russian victory in Ukraine would not have made the rest of the world significantly more afraid of the Russians.
But now, after four years of war and such heavy losses, the Russians have come to be feared far more than they would have been after a quick victory. Russia has demonstrated its determination to go all the way, the strength of its economy, the resilience of a country capable of withstanding both war and external pressure without serious disruption and, most importantly, its willingness to sacrifice as many soldiers as necessary to achieve its objectives.
When Biden was withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, thirteen US service members were killed. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, that number may seem insignificant, but for America itself it was enormous. It became a political scandal.
During last year’s election campaign, Trump repeatedly used those deaths against Biden. He met with the families of the fallen service members and repeatedly invited them to speak at his political rallies and events.
Both America and Europe have long since lost their tolerance for heavy wartime casualties. Even their losses in Iraq now appear enormous to them, although only around 4,500 American soldiers were killed there, a small number against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
And so, after Russia demonstrated that it was prepared to sacrifice not merely one hundred thousand or even five hundred thousand of its soldiers to achieve its goals, but as many as necessary, other countries are certainly less willing to tangle with it.
Even setting aside the nuclear factor, Trump himself, who spoke so much about those thirteen American deaths, would be deeply reluctant to enter a war against an opponent willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of people, especially one that is by no means technologically backward in either warfare or military equipment.
In Europe, fear of Russia has grown even stronger after such a war and such losses. Not one of these countries is politically or socially prepared to participate in a prolonged war or to sacrifice even fifty thousand soldiers’ lives. For them, that would be a catastrophe of historic proportions.
With the exception of Germany, all of them suffered fewer losses during the Second World War than Russia has now suffered in Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine are simply playing in a completely different league of casualties from the West!
Today, European countries possess neither the political will nor the public tolerance for casualties comparable to Russia’s, and this makes a direct confrontation with Russia unthinkable for them.
So the prolonged war, Russia’s resilience throughout it and its willingness to endure colossal losses in pursuit of its objectives have not reduced the fear of Russia and its standing in the world. They have only intensified it enormously.
The West understands perfectly well that Ukraine will not be able to defeat the Russians on the battlefield, and its entire strategy is built around the expectation that either 1991 or 1917 will be repeated in Russia, meaning the collapse of the previous Russian empires. But these are false expectations based on false comparisons between different historical cycles.
1-🚫 There Is No Alternative. 🚫
A historical moment in which there is, in essence, no alternative to the Kremlin.
This is Russia’s main advantage over America and China today.
Many people fail to grasp this, which leads to faulty analysis and empty expectations of either another 1917 or another 1991, when people brought down an Empire for the sake of an IDEA.
After all, 1917 and 1991 did not happen simply because there was a crisis. A crisis by itself does not bring down Empires from within. To destroy an empire, there must be a second component alongside the crisis, and that is an Alternative Idea, a New Path.
There was an alternative path in 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries had their social democracy, while the Bolsheviks had their own new path in the form of communism. And in 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Empire, there was not only a crisis, but also an alternative new path offered by the democrats in the form of democracy and the market.
So a Crisis is, of course, a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. Without the second factor, the product equals zero.
But when it comes to new alternative Ideas, Russia is currently in very bad shape. And this is largely the result of the historical moment, not the absence of strong new leaders.
This can be clearly seen in America today, for example, where very weak, and often simply foolish, people advocating the construction of socialism in America enjoy broad support. This shows that what matters most is still the Idea, because even a very strong leader cannot rally the masses behind an unpopular idea. But when the Idea exists, when society sees an alternative, it is prepared to follow even very weak and foolish leaders.
The peak moment comes when there is a new Path that many people want to follow, and at the same time a strong Leader, a tribune, appears.
As happened in history, for example, with Hitler.
The highest point of danger for a system is a historical convergence: a living Idea combined with a strong, charismatic tribune and leader, exactly as happened in Germany at that time.
Hitler, after all, did not force upon all Germans something they did not want. He gave them precisely what they wanted at the time, or at least what many of them wanted. He implemented exactly the program on which he had campaigned for power. He did not deceive his voters.
He had also offered them that same war from the beginning. From the outset, he spoke about expansion, and expansion was one of the central goals of the Path.
When people are not attracted by an Idea and its Leader, they will not voluntarily go to war as an entire country, especially when the war is not defensive but offensive. Nor will they fight a bloody war until the very end, all the way to the Reichstag.
America now has a new popular Idea, but it has no popular leader, no vivid and charismatic tribune capable of uniting the masses who are searching for an alternative and a new path. For now, this allows us not to worry too much about this new idea coming to power. But the Idea will not die either. It will continue to smolder and, depending on the situation in the country, its support will either increase or decrease. The Idea will remain alive and wait for its Leader, someone capable of bringing it to power.
An Idea does not die in the absence of a tribune. It lies dormant, breathes with the situation in the country, expands and contracts, and waits.
Socialism in America is like a smoldering peat bog: there is no open blaze, but the fire continues to spread underground. The only question is when the wind will appear, in the form of a strong tribune, a brilliant, intelligent and charismatic leader.
Another scenario is also possible, in which even an uncharismatic leader could bring socialism to power. But that would require an enormous internal crisis accompanied by total dissatisfaction among the majority.
This means that America faces two dangerous scenarios, not one. Either a tribune appears at the current level of dissatisfaction, or no tribune appears, but the crisis becomes total, in which case any gray socialist functionary will be enough. The second scenario is even more treacherous: everyone watches the charismatic figures, while systems are sometimes brought down by colorless functionaries.
America has a new path. Part of the population dislikes it, but that does not negate its existence.
China also has a new path, in the form of democracy as an attractive alternative to communism for many people.
And this is where Russia’s main advantage becomes apparent: because of the present historical moment, it has no Alternative.
Russia has already tried both of these ideas in its recent past, and in the eyes of many people, neither ended particularly well.
The inoculation against communism, with its tragic ending still fresh in this historical period, makes the ideas of social communism that are currently popular in America unable to take off in Russia. Even with a brilliant leader, this idea would not take off. History has not yet had enough time to whitewash it and make it attractive again in the eyes of many people.
Likewise, the new alternative idea of liberal democracy was also recently tried by the country, and its results were far from encouraging.
The wild 1990s are still remembered by many as difficult and lawless years, rather than as exciting and romantic ones.
The democrats of that period failed to understand that order was more important to the people than freedom. They therefore kept thinking about where they could provide even more freedom, instead of thinking about how to establish order in the country.
As a result, they created even greater disorder, because every form of order is built on restricting certain actions. You cannot give everyone complete freedom and still maintain order, because order consists of rules, and rules are restrictions in one form or another. Order must not simply impose restrictions; it must also inspire fear. People must be afraid to violate its rules and restrictions, because the more people are unafraid to break the rules of order and have no fear of them, the more order in a country shifts toward disorder, or toward an order that exists only for a privileged few.
In Russia during the 1990s, the democrats attacked order from two directions: by eliminating fear of violating the established order, and by giving absolute priority to every kind of freedom over the restrictions on which order depends.
That is why the 1990s were, in essence, such an anarchic period, when there was a great deal of freedom but very little order. And the majority of people are fed by order, not by freedom.
For an ordinary person, freedom without order is chaos in which the strongest or the most shameless survive.
This was what allowed Putin to defeat the liberal democrats in elections by contrasting his order with their disorder.
The liberal-democratic idea in Russia discredited itself, as did its leaders.
Or rather, the absence of such leaders. Yes, there was Nemtsov, and then there was Navalny, but their election results were, in essence, their real results, not the product of some enormous manipulation by the authorities.
They could make noise and bring part of the population into the streets, but they did not have the number of voters behind them required to win an election.
Navalny was as successful as he was largely because he was not as purely and visibly liberal-democratic as Nemtsov. He had emerged from a nationalist background. That was an advantage, not a disadvantage. He had more sides to him than Nemtsov, giving different kinds of voters something they could identify with and a reason to follow him.
But even that was not enough for Navalny to take power through elections, because there was no enormous crisis, and the Idea itself had not yet been rehabilitated after the 1990s.
The results achieved by Nemtsov and Navalny were not the product of manipulation. They were an almost honest measurement of the Idea multiplier. Making noise and bringing people into the streets is one thing: that is the energy of a minority. Elections measure the mass standing behind the Idea, and that mass was insufficient.
It was insufficient ten years ago, and it remains insufficient today. In addition, after Navalny’s departure, there are no new brilliant leaders. It is not simply that no brilliant new figures have emerged. Almost all of the older, well-known figures, even those who were never particularly brilliant, have politically buried themselves. Both those who left voluntarily and those whom Putin forced out, instead of simply campaigning for and supporting an end to the war, began supporting a Ukrainian victory. And the overwhelming majority of voters do not particularly like politicians who OPENLY support the opposing side against their own people during a war and celebrate destruction in their former Homeland.
The difference between “supporting an end to the war” and “supporting a Ukrainian victory” is the difference between a position from which it is theoretically possible to return to politics and a position that, in the eyes of the majority of voters, permanently removes you from the ranks of their own people.
The Idea is therefore not yet electorally viable, while brilliant leaders are completely absent. Or, more accurately, the existing leaders have been completely discredited.
It has turned out that, during this particular historical period, Russia has already suffered through the two main and largest alternative “new” ideas in the world, and for the moment it retains immunity to both of them.
The majority of voters currently sees neither social communism nor liberal democracy as an attractive alternative.
It is therefore foolish to expect what some experts predict when they anticipate either another 1917 or another 1991 in Russia.
These ideas will not work now, and even strong leaders would not be able to carry them to victory.
And today, there are no other major ideas in the world besides Islam and the right-wing movement.
Putinism itself is, in essence, a right-wing movement by modern standards, limited only by how far to the right it can move within a multiethnic Empire without destroying that Empire from within.
There is, in fact, no alternative to Putinism. It cannot be outflanked from the right either. It may be softer or harsher, but today, in the eyes of the majority of voters, there is no real alternative to it.
Even the Trumpian alternative path of returning to a golden and glorious past is currently impossible in Russia because there is no image of such a golden past.
This is a new Empire. It is only thirty-five years old, so it physically cannot yet have a golden past, especially since the formation of an Empire is almost always a turbulent and bloody period.
Because of America’s age, it has a past to which it can return, and it has periods that can be sold to many people as golden years. Russia, because of its much shorter past, simply does not have such a period.
Nor is it realistic to sell the majority the golden age of the former Russian empires, whether communist or tsarist, and lead people in great columns toward that bright past.
There is probably only one version of the past that can be sold in Russia: a return to the prewar period, before the war in Ukraine. But even that would still be Putin’s time, a return to Putin’s Russia, simply in a softer form.
And to return there, Russia would essentially have to admit defeat in the war, which completely contradicts the nature of Putin’s Russia. That is precisely what makes a return to that period unrealistic.
The door into the golden past appears to exist, but it can be opened only with a key that destroys the very past waiting behind that door.
Russia now finds itself in a very rare historical situation in which, in essence, there are no real alternative paths.
And here we return once again to Hitler. He also found himself in a historical period when, for a huge part of society, all the other major paths had already been burned out or discredited.
For the Germans, Weimar democracy was a spent alternative. It was associated with Versailles, hyperinflation, humiliation and unemployment. In addition, after the disorder of democracy, Hitler genuinely restored order to the country and improved the lives of the majority. This drove another nail into the coffin of the liberal-democratic idea. The Germans had been inoculated against it. Meanwhile, the majority had been inoculated against communism by the USSR, through the actions taking place inside the Soviet Empire at the time, multiplied further by Western anti-communist propaganda.
In other words, the Germans initially turned to Nazism partly because, in their eyes, the other paths had already been burned out. No new paths emerged before the end of the war, while the enemy’s demands for capitulation only forced the Germans to close ranks around the Idea and the leader they had chosen. This played a role in their endurance and in their genuine resistance all the way to the Reichstag.
The ending of the First World War was not repeated. At that time, domestic political instability caused by the emergence and growth of new, popular internal alternative ideas forced the authorities to capitulate in a war that had not even crossed Germany’s borders and was still being fought outside its territory.
This is where the similarity lies between the present condition of the Russian Empire and the Third Reich. There are no real alternatives attractive to the majority of voters. Or rather, such alternatives exist, but society has been inoculated against them, and there are neither effective Ideas nor brilliant leaders to represent them.
A Crisis is merely fuel. Without an engine, the Idea, and ignition, the Leader, the vehicle of revolution will not move.
When there are no great, brilliant and attractive Ideas, and no new leaders either, even an internal crisis does not lead to the fall of the regime.
Toward the end of its existence, the Roman Empire was also in a state of permanent crisis, but it truly collapsed only after an external conquest.
Until that external conquest occurred, the crisis merely changed the leaders rather than the system itself.
The same applies to Russia. An enormous crisis may lead only to Putin being replaced, not to the end of Putinism, because there are no major alternative Ideas.
Russia today is protected not so much by the strength of its repressive apparatus as by a unique historical moment. Over the course of a single century, the lifetime of three generations, the country has tested the two most powerful systemic alternatives that currently exist:
The communist project ended in shortages, cynicism and the geopolitical collapse of 1991.
The liberal-democratic project ended in poverty, gangsterism, the loss of stability and the humiliation of the 1990s.
Putinism itself is not so much an ideology as a functional model.
It is based on a combination of a strong state, order, patriotism, great-power identity and relative social stability compared with the 1990s.
At the same time, it is flexible. Harshness, isolation and pragmatism are controls on a panel that can be turned in either direction depending on the circumstances. The main elements are the vertical power structure and order. They form the body of the system.
Today, it cannot be attacked from the position of the past, because the past has been discredited, or from the position of the future, because the future is blurred and undefined.
As for whether Putinism can be ended through the military conquest of the new Russian Empire, with its nuclear weapons and such a past behind it, everyone can answer that question for themselves.
The same formula also works in reverse.
It explains why, despite all the problems in Ukraine’s the home front, that the home front has not yet collapsed. A crisis and a war by themselves are not enough to change the country’s course under the simple slogan “we want peace.” There must also be an alternative Idea built around peace and a brilliant Leader to represent it.
Mass dissatisfaction takes shape around an alternative Idea, not simply around the desire to “live normally.”
A Crisis produces dissatisfaction, but only an Idea transforms dissatisfaction into power.
Dissatisfaction is a condition. It is dispersed like steam: it presses in every direction at once and therefore presses nowhere.
Only form can turn it into power, and the Idea provides that form.
The demand to “live normally” offers no answer to the question of exactly how people should live. It offers no program, no enemy and no vision of tomorrow. Consequently, it offers no point around which people can unite. For one person, “normal” means low prices; for another, freedom; for a third, order; and for a fourth, the return of the past. A million dissatisfied people, each with a different idea of what “normal” means, are not yet a force. They are a million isolated individuals.
An Idea begins where a million individual declarations of “I’ve had enough” are transformed into a single collective statement: “Instead of this, we want this.”
Dispersed steam is merely dampness. But collect it inside a boiler, build up its pressure and direct it into a piston, and it will move an entire train.
The Idea is precisely the form that transforms dispersed dissatisfaction into a MOVEMENT.
What is the main downside of the USSR’s colossal losses in the Second World War?
Probably the fact that they made it seem NORMAL to achieve success at the cost of such losses.
Although back then, judging by Hitler’s plans and actions, as well as his general attitude toward the Slavs, it probably was worth it. Hitler considered the Slavs “racially inferior” and saw them as an ethnic group that, in his view, was incapable of self-government or cultural progress and fit only for slave labor.
This does not mean that he was a raving maniac. He was a kind of Darwinist when it came to human beings. To him, life was a simple struggle for survival, in which the supremacy of the “Aryan race” and the extermination of the “weak” were natural processes.
A struggle between species for survival.
Now let us return to the present day.
There sits Putin, thinking: our fathers laid down the lives of around 13 to 15 million people in the Second World War, so surely we can sacrifice one or two million here in the struggle for justice?
What, do we love the Motherland any less?!
And there likewise sits Zelensky, thinking: our grandfathers laid down the lives of around 7 to 10 million people in the Second World War.
In raw numbers, Russia lost more people in the Second World War, but as a proportion of the total population, Ukraine suffered greater losses.
And so Zelensky, too, thinks that losing one or two million people is an acceptable price to pay in the struggle for a just peace.
Losses that would be simply COLOSSAL by the standards of other countries become acceptable. There is a deep historical tolerance for casualties in the minds of the rulers of Russia and Ukraine, as well as among part of the population in both countries.
Especially in such a “righteous war.” This is not the USSR’s war in Afghanistan. Unlike that war, in this one, EVERYTHING IS RIGHT: both sides have an ideology and a sense of purpose.
The regular peaks and troughs in the casualty data throughout the whole war is interesting in itself, is there any explanation for this? I wonder if other wars of attrition in history follow similar patterns, particularly the Western Front of the First World War?
These peaks and troughs reflect intensifications and lulls in fighting. But also casualties tend to be lighter in summer, when leafy vegetation provides cover for soldiers infiltrating enemy positions.
Ukraine's main offense has been to use drones and missiles against civilian targets inside Russia...There is no dispute that in the actual war, Ukraine is being outshot by a tremendous margin, and has suffered an a huge number of casualties as a result..even Ukrainian sources have stated this, to the extent that Ukraine's press gangs are running into serious civilian resistance while grabbing people off the street....
With respect to sourcing, why would there be a need to have a NATO psyops in the US? I thought US contribution to the Ukrainian war effort was effectively 0 now? The US is also militarily preoccupied in another theater.
For potential critiques, not of method yet, ClaudeAI wondered if MediaZone's methods may be undercounting the peripheral regions of Russia which may have produced more of its recruits and/or casualties.
My own question based on that critique would be whether there are fewer social media users / user adjacents (people's who's close associates use social media) represented in the casualty pool now as my understanding is that Ukraine and Russia are both pulling increasingly older individuals to fight.
Are there any estimates of Ukranian casualties? I'm curious whether the trend is down for both groups as World War 1's main deaths were purportedly prior to the trench warfare part. (the World War 1 claim was from an unsourced part of the internet)
Also minor correction(?), I think the decrease in Russian casualties begins December 2024 not 2025?
There is a similar project for Ukraine -- ualosses.org. But I haven't looked into it (yet), so cannot comment on how good their data are.
Undercounting peripheral (or any other) regions is not a problem for this analysis, because I aim to estimate not absolute numbers, but relative ones -- how they change with time. As long as this bias stays constant through the period analyzed, it will not affect the main result.
Another measure of fatalities that's frequently used, especially by Simplicius, is the ratio of dead bodies frequently exchanged between the two combatants...That has been running about 10-15 Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian death...And frontline Ukrainian troops have complained that they are getting hit and frequently killed by glide bombs and FBV drones, without ever seeing the enemy...But Western periodicals are pretty much banned from reporting such statistics...
Unfortunately, the primary reason for this disparity is that Ukraine is losing ground (albeit very slowly). Thus, it is Russians to whom the main job of gathering bodies falls. I don't see any way to estimate this effect to get at the actual ratio.
Does the data include Russian recruitment of foreign fighters? Such as in "Lured by Russia, African soldiers end up on deadly front lines of Ukraine war" https://youtu.be/WlhvVmud6n0
No, Mediazona only counts deaths of Russian citizens.
This is one of those wars where the numbers are secondary and the psychology of nations is primary.
**"The Price of Will" ☝**
These experts and analysts are, of course, amusing in their misconceptions when they claim that because Russia failed to overpower Ukraine quickly, it thereby exposed its weakness and made the world far less afraid of its military power.
First of all, by making such claims, they are belittling the Ukrainian army. Since the spring of 2022, I have been writing that people should not belittle Russian soldiers, because by doing so they are also belittling Ukrainian soldiers. Fine, perhaps at the beginning of the war, in 2022–23, this still made some psychological sense as a way of convincing Ukrainians that the enemy was not so strong and that victory was entirely possible. But to continue making such claims now, in 2025, is simply foolish.
On the contrary, the enemy should be elevated. Then a draw, or even a defeat, does not feel quite so humiliating, while a victory becomes especially sweet. After all, the war was fought against a STRONG OPPONENT, not a weak one, as certain people on the world political stage continue to claim.
Even losing to a strong opponent is not as humiliating as losing to a weak one.
That was the part of the issue directly concerning Ukraine. Now let us discuss the claim that, because Russia failed to achieve a quick victory in Ukraine, the world has become less afraid of it. In reality, this is complete nonsense, because after a prolonged war, Russia has come to be feared more, not less.
A quick war would not actually have demonstrated Russia’s strength. No one truly knew how strong the Ukrainian army was, especially since in 2014 it had performed, to put it mildly, rather poorly. Had Russia achieved a quick victory, it would have been chalked up not to Russian strength but to Ukrainian weakness.
In other words, a rapid Russian victory in Ukraine would not have made the rest of the world significantly more afraid of the Russians.
But now, after four years of war and such heavy losses, the Russians have come to be feared far more than they would have been after a quick victory. Russia has demonstrated its determination to go all the way, the strength of its economy, the resilience of a country capable of withstanding both war and external pressure without serious disruption and, most importantly, its willingness to sacrifice as many soldiers as necessary to achieve its objectives.
When Biden was withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan, thirteen US service members were killed. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, that number may seem insignificant, but for America itself it was enormous. It became a political scandal.
During last year’s election campaign, Trump repeatedly used those deaths against Biden. He met with the families of the fallen service members and repeatedly invited them to speak at his political rallies and events.
Both America and Europe have long since lost their tolerance for heavy wartime casualties. Even their losses in Iraq now appear enormous to them, although only around 4,500 American soldiers were killed there, a small number against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.
And so, after Russia demonstrated that it was prepared to sacrifice not merely one hundred thousand or even five hundred thousand of its soldiers to achieve its goals, but as many as necessary, other countries are certainly less willing to tangle with it.
Even setting aside the nuclear factor, Trump himself, who spoke so much about those thirteen American deaths, would be deeply reluctant to enter a war against an opponent willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of people, especially one that is by no means technologically backward in either warfare or military equipment.
In Europe, fear of Russia has grown even stronger after such a war and such losses. Not one of these countries is politically or socially prepared to participate in a prolonged war or to sacrifice even fifty thousand soldiers’ lives. For them, that would be a catastrophe of historic proportions.
With the exception of Germany, all of them suffered fewer losses during the Second World War than Russia has now suffered in Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine are simply playing in a completely different league of casualties from the West!
Today, European countries possess neither the political will nor the public tolerance for casualties comparable to Russia’s, and this makes a direct confrontation with Russia unthinkable for them.
So the prolonged war, Russia’s resilience throughout it and its willingness to endure colossal losses in pursuit of its objectives have not reduced the fear of Russia and its standing in the world. They have only intensified it enormously.
The West understands perfectly well that Ukraine will not be able to defeat the Russians on the battlefield, and its entire strategy is built around the expectation that either 1991 or 1917 will be repeated in Russia, meaning the collapse of the previous Russian empires. But these are false expectations based on false comparisons between different historical cycles.
1-🚫 There Is No Alternative. 🚫
A historical moment in which there is, in essence, no alternative to the Kremlin.
This is Russia’s main advantage over America and China today.
Many people fail to grasp this, which leads to faulty analysis and empty expectations of either another 1917 or another 1991, when people brought down an Empire for the sake of an IDEA.
After all, 1917 and 1991 did not happen simply because there was a crisis. A crisis by itself does not bring down Empires from within. To destroy an empire, there must be a second component alongside the crisis, and that is an Alternative Idea, a New Path.
There was an alternative path in 1917. The Socialist Revolutionaries had their social democracy, while the Bolsheviks had their own new path in the form of communism. And in 1991, during the collapse of the Soviet Empire, there was not only a crisis, but also an alternative new path offered by the democrats in the form of democracy and the market.
So a Crisis is, of course, a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. Without the second factor, the product equals zero.
But when it comes to new alternative Ideas, Russia is currently in very bad shape. And this is largely the result of the historical moment, not the absence of strong new leaders.
This can be clearly seen in America today, for example, where very weak, and often simply foolish, people advocating the construction of socialism in America enjoy broad support. This shows that what matters most is still the Idea, because even a very strong leader cannot rally the masses behind an unpopular idea. But when the Idea exists, when society sees an alternative, it is prepared to follow even very weak and foolish leaders.
The peak moment comes when there is a new Path that many people want to follow, and at the same time a strong Leader, a tribune, appears.
As happened in history, for example, with Hitler.
The highest point of danger for a system is a historical convergence: a living Idea combined with a strong, charismatic tribune and leader, exactly as happened in Germany at that time.
Hitler, after all, did not force upon all Germans something they did not want. He gave them precisely what they wanted at the time, or at least what many of them wanted. He implemented exactly the program on which he had campaigned for power. He did not deceive his voters.
He had also offered them that same war from the beginning. From the outset, he spoke about expansion, and expansion was one of the central goals of the Path.
When people are not attracted by an Idea and its Leader, they will not voluntarily go to war as an entire country, especially when the war is not defensive but offensive. Nor will they fight a bloody war until the very end, all the way to the Reichstag.
America now has a new popular Idea, but it has no popular leader, no vivid and charismatic tribune capable of uniting the masses who are searching for an alternative and a new path. For now, this allows us not to worry too much about this new idea coming to power. But the Idea will not die either. It will continue to smolder and, depending on the situation in the country, its support will either increase or decrease. The Idea will remain alive and wait for its Leader, someone capable of bringing it to power.
An Idea does not die in the absence of a tribune. It lies dormant, breathes with the situation in the country, expands and contracts, and waits.
Socialism in America is like a smoldering peat bog: there is no open blaze, but the fire continues to spread underground. The only question is when the wind will appear, in the form of a strong tribune, a brilliant, intelligent and charismatic leader.
Another scenario is also possible, in which even an uncharismatic leader could bring socialism to power. But that would require an enormous internal crisis accompanied by total dissatisfaction among the majority.
This means that America faces two dangerous scenarios, not one. Either a tribune appears at the current level of dissatisfaction, or no tribune appears, but the crisis becomes total, in which case any gray socialist functionary will be enough. The second scenario is even more treacherous: everyone watches the charismatic figures, while systems are sometimes brought down by colorless functionaries.
America has a new path. Part of the population dislikes it, but that does not negate its existence.
China also has a new path, in the form of democracy as an attractive alternative to communism for many people.
And this is where Russia’s main advantage becomes apparent: because of the present historical moment, it has no Alternative.
Russia has already tried both of these ideas in its recent past, and in the eyes of many people, neither ended particularly well.
The inoculation against communism, with its tragic ending still fresh in this historical period, makes the ideas of social communism that are currently popular in America unable to take off in Russia. Even with a brilliant leader, this idea would not take off. History has not yet had enough time to whitewash it and make it attractive again in the eyes of many people.
Likewise, the new alternative idea of liberal democracy was also recently tried by the country, and its results were far from encouraging.
The wild 1990s are still remembered by many as difficult and lawless years, rather than as exciting and romantic ones.
The democrats of that period failed to understand that order was more important to the people than freedom. They therefore kept thinking about where they could provide even more freedom, instead of thinking about how to establish order in the country.
As a result, they created even greater disorder, because every form of order is built on restricting certain actions. You cannot give everyone complete freedom and still maintain order, because order consists of rules, and rules are restrictions in one form or another. Order must not simply impose restrictions; it must also inspire fear. People must be afraid to violate its rules and restrictions, because the more people are unafraid to break the rules of order and have no fear of them, the more order in a country shifts toward disorder, or toward an order that exists only for a privileged few.
In Russia during the 1990s, the democrats attacked order from two directions: by eliminating fear of violating the established order, and by giving absolute priority to every kind of freedom over the restrictions on which order depends.
That is why the 1990s were, in essence, such an anarchic period, when there was a great deal of freedom but very little order. And the majority of people are fed by order, not by freedom.
For an ordinary person, freedom without order is chaos in which the strongest or the most shameless survive.
This was what allowed Putin to defeat the liberal democrats in elections by contrasting his order with their disorder.
The liberal-democratic idea in Russia discredited itself, as did its leaders.
Or rather, the absence of such leaders. Yes, there was Nemtsov, and then there was Navalny, but their election results were, in essence, their real results, not the product of some enormous manipulation by the authorities.
They could make noise and bring part of the population into the streets, but they did not have the number of voters behind them required to win an election.
Navalny was as successful as he was largely because he was not as purely and visibly liberal-democratic as Nemtsov. He had emerged from a nationalist background. That was an advantage, not a disadvantage. He had more sides to him than Nemtsov, giving different kinds of voters something they could identify with and a reason to follow him.
But even that was not enough for Navalny to take power through elections, because there was no enormous crisis, and the Idea itself had not yet been rehabilitated after the 1990s.
The results achieved by Nemtsov and Navalny were not the product of manipulation. They were an almost honest measurement of the Idea multiplier. Making noise and bringing people into the streets is one thing: that is the energy of a minority. Elections measure the mass standing behind the Idea, and that mass was insufficient.
It was insufficient ten years ago, and it remains insufficient today. In addition, after Navalny’s departure, there are no new brilliant leaders. It is not simply that no brilliant new figures have emerged. Almost all of the older, well-known figures, even those who were never particularly brilliant, have politically buried themselves. Both those who left voluntarily and those whom Putin forced out, instead of simply campaigning for and supporting an end to the war, began supporting a Ukrainian victory. And the overwhelming majority of voters do not particularly like politicians who OPENLY support the opposing side against their own people during a war and celebrate destruction in their former Homeland.
Continued in the comments below.👇🏻👇🏻
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The difference between “supporting an end to the war” and “supporting a Ukrainian victory” is the difference between a position from which it is theoretically possible to return to politics and a position that, in the eyes of the majority of voters, permanently removes you from the ranks of their own people.
The Idea is therefore not yet electorally viable, while brilliant leaders are completely absent. Or, more accurately, the existing leaders have been completely discredited.
It has turned out that, during this particular historical period, Russia has already suffered through the two main and largest alternative “new” ideas in the world, and for the moment it retains immunity to both of them.
The majority of voters currently sees neither social communism nor liberal democracy as an attractive alternative.
It is therefore foolish to expect what some experts predict when they anticipate either another 1917 or another 1991 in Russia.
These ideas will not work now, and even strong leaders would not be able to carry them to victory.
And today, there are no other major ideas in the world besides Islam and the right-wing movement.
Putinism itself is, in essence, a right-wing movement by modern standards, limited only by how far to the right it can move within a multiethnic Empire without destroying that Empire from within.
There is, in fact, no alternative to Putinism. It cannot be outflanked from the right either. It may be softer or harsher, but today, in the eyes of the majority of voters, there is no real alternative to it.
Even the Trumpian alternative path of returning to a golden and glorious past is currently impossible in Russia because there is no image of such a golden past.
This is a new Empire. It is only thirty-five years old, so it physically cannot yet have a golden past, especially since the formation of an Empire is almost always a turbulent and bloody period.
Because of America’s age, it has a past to which it can return, and it has periods that can be sold to many people as golden years. Russia, because of its much shorter past, simply does not have such a period.
Nor is it realistic to sell the majority the golden age of the former Russian empires, whether communist or tsarist, and lead people in great columns toward that bright past.
There is probably only one version of the past that can be sold in Russia: a return to the prewar period, before the war in Ukraine. But even that would still be Putin’s time, a return to Putin’s Russia, simply in a softer form.
And to return there, Russia would essentially have to admit defeat in the war, which completely contradicts the nature of Putin’s Russia. That is precisely what makes a return to that period unrealistic.
The door into the golden past appears to exist, but it can be opened only with a key that destroys the very past waiting behind that door.
Russia now finds itself in a very rare historical situation in which, in essence, there are no real alternative paths.
And here we return once again to Hitler. He also found himself in a historical period when, for a huge part of society, all the other major paths had already been burned out or discredited.
For the Germans, Weimar democracy was a spent alternative. It was associated with Versailles, hyperinflation, humiliation and unemployment. In addition, after the disorder of democracy, Hitler genuinely restored order to the country and improved the lives of the majority. This drove another nail into the coffin of the liberal-democratic idea. The Germans had been inoculated against it. Meanwhile, the majority had been inoculated against communism by the USSR, through the actions taking place inside the Soviet Empire at the time, multiplied further by Western anti-communist propaganda.
In other words, the Germans initially turned to Nazism partly because, in their eyes, the other paths had already been burned out. No new paths emerged before the end of the war, while the enemy’s demands for capitulation only forced the Germans to close ranks around the Idea and the leader they had chosen. This played a role in their endurance and in their genuine resistance all the way to the Reichstag.
The ending of the First World War was not repeated. At that time, domestic political instability caused by the emergence and growth of new, popular internal alternative ideas forced the authorities to capitulate in a war that had not even crossed Germany’s borders and was still being fought outside its territory.
This is where the similarity lies between the present condition of the Russian Empire and the Third Reich. There are no real alternatives attractive to the majority of voters. Or rather, such alternatives exist, but society has been inoculated against them, and there are neither effective Ideas nor brilliant leaders to represent them.
A Crisis is merely fuel. Without an engine, the Idea, and ignition, the Leader, the vehicle of revolution will not move.
When there are no great, brilliant and attractive Ideas, and no new leaders either, even an internal crisis does not lead to the fall of the regime.
Toward the end of its existence, the Roman Empire was also in a state of permanent crisis, but it truly collapsed only after an external conquest.
Until that external conquest occurred, the crisis merely changed the leaders rather than the system itself.
The same applies to Russia. An enormous crisis may lead only to Putin being replaced, not to the end of Putinism, because there are no major alternative Ideas.
Russia today is protected not so much by the strength of its repressive apparatus as by a unique historical moment. Over the course of a single century, the lifetime of three generations, the country has tested the two most powerful systemic alternatives that currently exist:
The communist project ended in shortages, cynicism and the geopolitical collapse of 1991.
The liberal-democratic project ended in poverty, gangsterism, the loss of stability and the humiliation of the 1990s.
Putinism itself is not so much an ideology as a functional model.
It is based on a combination of a strong state, order, patriotism, great-power identity and relative social stability compared with the 1990s.
At the same time, it is flexible. Harshness, isolation and pragmatism are controls on a panel that can be turned in either direction depending on the circumstances. The main elements are the vertical power structure and order. They form the body of the system.
Today, it cannot be attacked from the position of the past, because the past has been discredited, or from the position of the future, because the future is blurred and undefined.
As for whether Putinism can be ended through the military conquest of the new Russian Empire, with its nuclear weapons and such a past behind it, everyone can answer that question for themselves.
The same formula also works in reverse.
It explains why, despite all the problems in Ukraine’s the home front, that the home front has not yet collapsed. A crisis and a war by themselves are not enough to change the country’s course under the simple slogan “we want peace.” There must also be an alternative Idea built around peace and a brilliant Leader to represent it.
Mass dissatisfaction takes shape around an alternative Idea, not simply around the desire to “live normally.”
A Crisis produces dissatisfaction, but only an Idea transforms dissatisfaction into power.
Dissatisfaction is a condition. It is dispersed like steam: it presses in every direction at once and therefore presses nowhere.
Only form can turn it into power, and the Idea provides that form.
The demand to “live normally” offers no answer to the question of exactly how people should live. It offers no program, no enemy and no vision of tomorrow. Consequently, it offers no point around which people can unite. For one person, “normal” means low prices; for another, freedom; for a third, order; and for a fourth, the return of the past. A million dissatisfied people, each with a different idea of what “normal” means, are not yet a force. They are a million isolated individuals.
An Idea begins where a million individual declarations of “I’ve had enough” are transformed into a single collective statement: “Instead of this, we want this.”
Dispersed steam is merely dampness. But collect it inside a boiler, build up its pressure and direct it into a piston, and it will move an entire train.
The Idea is precisely the form that transforms dispersed dissatisfaction into a MOVEMENT.
What is the main downside of the USSR’s colossal losses in the Second World War?
Probably the fact that they made it seem NORMAL to achieve success at the cost of such losses.
Although back then, judging by Hitler’s plans and actions, as well as his general attitude toward the Slavs, it probably was worth it. Hitler considered the Slavs “racially inferior” and saw them as an ethnic group that, in his view, was incapable of self-government or cultural progress and fit only for slave labor.
This does not mean that he was a raving maniac. He was a kind of Darwinist when it came to human beings. To him, life was a simple struggle for survival, in which the supremacy of the “Aryan race” and the extermination of the “weak” were natural processes.
A struggle between species for survival.
Now let us return to the present day.
There sits Putin, thinking: our fathers laid down the lives of around 13 to 15 million people in the Second World War, so surely we can sacrifice one or two million here in the struggle for justice?
What, do we love the Motherland any less?!
And there likewise sits Zelensky, thinking: our grandfathers laid down the lives of around 7 to 10 million people in the Second World War.
In raw numbers, Russia lost more people in the Second World War, but as a proportion of the total population, Ukraine suffered greater losses.
And so Zelensky, too, thinks that losing one or two million people is an acceptable price to pay in the struggle for a just peace.
Losses that would be simply COLOSSAL by the standards of other countries become acceptable. There is a deep historical tolerance for casualties in the minds of the rulers of Russia and Ukraine, as well as among part of the population in both countries.
Especially in such a “righteous war.” This is not the USSR’s war in Afghanistan. Unlike that war, in this one, EVERYTHING IS RIGHT: both sides have an ideology and a sense of purpose.
Certainly this war is perceived as existential in both Russia and Ukraine.
The regular peaks and troughs in the casualty data throughout the whole war is interesting in itself, is there any explanation for this? I wonder if other wars of attrition in history follow similar patterns, particularly the Western Front of the First World War?
These peaks and troughs reflect intensifications and lulls in fighting. But also casualties tend to be lighter in summer, when leafy vegetation provides cover for soldiers infiltrating enemy positions.
Ukraine's main offense has been to use drones and missiles against civilian targets inside Russia...There is no dispute that in the actual war, Ukraine is being outshot by a tremendous margin, and has suffered an a huge number of casualties as a result..even Ukrainian sources have stated this, to the extent that Ukraine's press gangs are running into serious civilian resistance while grabbing people off the street....
With respect to sourcing, why would there be a need to have a NATO psyops in the US? I thought US contribution to the Ukrainian war effort was effectively 0 now? The US is also militarily preoccupied in another theater.
For potential critiques, not of method yet, ClaudeAI wondered if MediaZone's methods may be undercounting the peripheral regions of Russia which may have produced more of its recruits and/or casualties.
My own question based on that critique would be whether there are fewer social media users / user adjacents (people's who's close associates use social media) represented in the casualty pool now as my understanding is that Ukraine and Russia are both pulling increasingly older individuals to fight.
Are there any estimates of Ukranian casualties? I'm curious whether the trend is down for both groups as World War 1's main deaths were purportedly prior to the trench warfare part. (the World War 1 claim was from an unsourced part of the internet)
Also minor correction(?), I think the decrease in Russian casualties begins December 2024 not 2025?
There is a similar project for Ukraine -- ualosses.org. But I haven't looked into it (yet), so cannot comment on how good their data are.
Undercounting peripheral (or any other) regions is not a problem for this analysis, because I aim to estimate not absolute numbers, but relative ones -- how they change with time. As long as this bias stays constant through the period analyzed, it will not affect the main result.