Ukraine war updates

[EndtheMadnessNow]

If these numbers are near accurate you'd think the war would be over right soon.

Putin says Ukrainian losses five times higher (June 5, 2024)

Kiev is losing at least 50,000 people a month, the Russian president has told journalists

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are losing at least 50,000 service personnel a month, five times more than the Russian military, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

Putin was speaking with reporters from international news agencies on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

“According to our estimates, the Ukrainian army loses about 50,000 people every month,” Putin said in response to a question, adding that the ratio of sanitary and irrecoverable casualties was “about 50-50.”

While not specifying the number of Russian casualties, Putin said the number of irrecoverable losses was at least five times less than those incurred by Kiev's forces. There are currently 1,348 Russian servicemen held in Ukraine as prisoners of war, while 6,465 Ukrainian servicemen are in Russian captivity, the president revealed.

Ukraine is capable of mobilizing about 30,000 troops a month and “there aren’t very many volunteers,” Putin explained.

“It doesn’t solve the problem,” the Russian leader said, “All of the people they are able to mobilize go to replace the battlefield losses.”

It is “an open secret” in Ukraine that the push to lower the age of conscription has come from the US, Putin added.

In April, Kiev amended the rules to allow the drafting of 25-year-olds, down from the previous threshold of 27. According to Putin, Washington wants to revise it to 23, “then to 18, or maybe directly to 18,” and has already convinced Ukraine to require 17-year-olds to register for mobilization.

The acute shortage of frontline troops has driven Kiev to consider accepting deserters who have chosen to return to the battlefield, according to an instruction from the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to AFU commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky, published on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the latest Defence Intelligence update from the MOD on the situation in Ukraine – 31 May 2024:




Flipping back to Putin...

Nothing will change after US elections – Putin

Russia’s relations with Washington will not be impacted, no matter who is elected president

“We believe no serious changes will happen after the elections,” the Russian leader explained, in response to a question from Reuters.

Putin reminded reporters that he had already commented on this issue, describing the incumbent US president Joe Biden as “an old-school politician” and “more predictable” than his predecessor and challenger Donald Trump.

“Everyone took my statement about Biden as some kind of joke at his expense,” Putin noted, adding that the American president’s reaction – to attack and insult the Russian leader – just proved his point that Biden was predictable.

Putin pointed out that Russia “never had any special relations” with Trump, whom the Democrats in 2016 accused of being a kind of Russian agent. The Republican president had in fact introduced “massive sanctions” against Russia and exited the INF treaty.

By prosecuting Trump in court, however, the Americans are “burning themselves up from the inside, their state, their political system,” Putin told reporters. “They are burning it down to the ground.”

The current administration is making one mistake after another,” Putin said.

Nobody in the US cares about Ukraine’s interests,” Putin said. Americans are “not fighting for Ukraine or the Ukrainian people, they are fighting for their own grandeur and global leadership.”