Dear Readers:
A couple of days ago, at a press conference in Kiev, when asked about Ukrainian losses, Zelensky put out the number 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action since the start of the war in February 2022. “Thirty-one thousand Ukrainian soldiers have perished,” Zelensky stated. This in answer to a question from one of the reporters; unfortunately, the question itself is inaudible in the clip, but Zelensky’s response to it is clear as a bell. If a bell had a gravelly voice like dragging a pickaxe across a chalkboard:
The pro-Russian side has mocked this number mercilessly, as a big fat lie. However, one Russian reporter, namely Alexander Kots, believes that he knows where that rather precise number actually comes from.
On his Telegram channel, Kots received a comment from one of his subscribers. Who posted the following:
“In my opinion, Zelensky was actually telling the truth, but not in regards to the question that was posed to him. That number [of 31,000] is not the number of soldiers killed in action, but rather the number of families who have received compensation from the government for their loss.”
The same commenter told an anecdotal story about his (female) cousin, who is a native of Avdeevka. The commenter’s mother and his cousin’s mother are biological sisters. [yalensis: This is a good detail, because Russian kinship terms are not always precise, the word cousin (двоюродная сестра) could sometimes mean a second cousin or great-niece.]
Anyhow, the female cousin’s husband was conscripted into the Ukrainian army, and perished in the course of the summer counteroffensive. His body was returned to his wife; and yet she never received any compensation from the Ukrainian government.
The commenter adds: “I am not able to email my cousin directly, since my email address is from a Russian site. However, our moms, who are sisters, communicate all the time; my mom has a Belorussian email address. This is how we can stay in touch and know everything that is going on. And this is my theory about that number of 31,000, and this is why the Americans can rightfully state that this war is their cheapest way to fight against us. And by us, I mean Ukrainians as well as Russians.”
Awful Avalanche 
Meanwhile Mediazone’s estimates of Russian deaths race ahead while their actual count is almost standing still. How so – they used to say a count of 15k meant probably 20k. Then they said that 20k probably meant 40k. Now 25k is interpreted as really 75k.
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The rate accelerates, I think this is a calculus problem from a textbook!
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Interesting speculation. If only 31K Ukie families have received comp for loss of their military loved ones, does that mean over 400K salaries are being paid to corrupt unit commanders who have pretended dead soldiers did not in fact die? What about the presumably mountains of food sent to feed the undead? Where is it? Exported to Poland to cheese off the farmers there, perhaps?
Other speculation by pro-Russia pundits is that Zelensky really meant losses in Avdeevka and across the entire SMO front from Jan 1 to mid Feb this year.
Syrsky piped up today and “expressed concern about the discovered miscalculations of individual commanders at the front, emphasizing that this affected the stability of defensive positions in the Avdiivka and Zaporozhye directions.” Not his fault people didn’t follow orders. So there, critics!
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Maybe Syrsky is in on all these rotten scams?
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It’s a plausible theory. The way statistics work for senior individuals who don’t have time to think about such little things themselves as “numbers of my people slaughtered in Boris’ war”, is that they ask an underling.
The underling, now flummoxed by the request and desperately looking for a way to produce a number that is both defensible in source (i.e. passes the buck appropriately) and less-likely to end up placing them on a “list”, searches for an official source of info. They look at prior published figures, and failing that, look at proxies and do a count from this or that database.
“People we paid out for” is a pretty good proxy. It’s also very low, which is bonus for the underling (or, under-underling, probably) who actioned the request. It’s so low as to be instantly unbelievable, which may have inadvertently–if this commentary is correct–shone a light on something the grifters would have rather not revealed.
Which is even more hilarious than crowing about shooting down a transport plane, and then having to walk back the murder of your own soldiers. Not paying the families who have lost their breadwinners is much more likely to radicalize those families against the state. Hence Syrsky’s scrambling… he wouldn’t pipe up at all unless someone goosed him with a pin.
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It does indeed sound plausible. Speaking as somebody whose job involves querying data to produce metrics requested by upper management. For example, in a hospital, managers might want to know the percentage of patients who were given the wrong medication and suffered physical harm as a result. And then they tell you how to define the metric. As you proceed and the numbers are higher than they expected, they continue to tweak the definition and ask you code in a whole series of logical exceptions. Their goal changes subtlely, from “how much harm?” to “how can we minimize our reporting out of harm?” To the agencies they have to report out to.
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This letter was originally published by the most prominent of the 3LA mouthpieces in NYC and reproduced here under the fair use doctrine alongside the editorial board’s preface
————————————————
“…while this letter may appear a little tone deaf to the untrained ear of America’s worthless working class, whom we openly despise, it represents, to those of us who appreciate the finer things in life, our brave Galicians Vassals at their very best.
– The Editorial Board
Dear People of Ukrainia,
We wanted to address our subordinate underlings “concerns” about your now dead relatives, those soldiers who were reported to be “missing” and not dead, the undead Army of Ukrainia. Those soldiers are not counted as dead because, in their now wholly spiritual state, they continue their brave fight for our overseas funding efforts…just as the “Ghost of Kiev” still flies in our imagination, your brave men continue the fight for US-Tax-dollars!
Soon the efforts of these undead souls will allow forces aligned with us to take valuable positions in Miami, Aspen and the Hamptons, which our crucial to our victory in this war, the sacrifices of these men and families will not be in vain! Our Leadership wishes Glory to All who continue to fight in their undead state. Talk about a fighting spirit!
Their eternal sacrifice will be remembered by ourselves, our wives, our numerous mistresses, [some which were once their wives & girlfriends], our children and their children’s children. Thanks to our efforts, these undead fighters miserable short lives have been given a great purpose and meaning…and we intend to lavishly celebrate their sacrifice at every possible opportunity!
Regards,
Your Glorious Galician Overlords !!!
————————————–
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“And Bakhmut will always live in our hearts…”
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War is an awful thing and the use of satire to mock it’s perpetrators might seem crass to some because, it may appear like I’m making light of it’s victim’s plight. NOT True…I just need to express my visceral disgust with the “leaders” of DC, London & Galicia without the use of profanity laden language.
BTW, “which our crucial to our victory in this war” should have read as “which are crucial to our victory in this war”.
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Don’t worry S.Brennan. Our hearts are in the right place. When I hear/read/watch commentary on Ukraine I often laugh derisively out loud: Ha ha ha. Because it is too crazy, besides horrible.
Satire, however, is humorous in another way, because it involves a cognitive process rather than a gut reaction.
And the result is smiling, not guffawing.
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Agree. Humor can be used to point out the horror and absurdity, not just of war, but the human condition in general. I am reminded of Jonathan Swift, “A modest proposal”, in which he shocked the English public by proposing to cook and eat Irish children.
I reckon English people of that time still had a molecule of conscience, in order to be shocked in the first place. I suspect most of the Israeli public today would not be shocked if the same were proposed regarding Palestinian children, they might take the proposal as an actual cookbook.
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Breaking news!
Ukraine shot down 3000000 Russian planes today. Unfortunately,the remaining 3 planes then dropped 300 FABs on Ukrainian positions,following which Ukraine conducted a strategic and orderly withdrawal to yet another more advantageous position,killing 3 billion Russians on the way.
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Did the Ukrainians finish off the Russian fleet, while they were at it?
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Russian fleet? What Russian fleet?!???
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They still have a couple of rowboats left….
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Had a feeling these Ukrainian K.I.A. figures were statistics involving pensions payments- in this instance for veterans’ widows- and as such could not actually be refuted. This is regime bookkeeping. And that $61billion from U.S. taxpayers must contribute to a system of welfare payments, as well as for the weaponry that necessitates the payments. And this is after all those “off the books” payments needed to keep the regime production team operational and “on message”.
What we are witness to in Ukraine is a profound dystopia. It is a “lucky” widow who has official acknowledgement of a husband’s death and is in receipt of compensation. I wonder how the other tens of thousands of wives of the missing feel about this societal discrepancy? Is it possible that the ideology of Slava Ukraini usurps all other Ukrainian emotions, even those associated with one’s closest family? And where are the regime wives? They seem to have been discretely removed. The regime senses danger and they can afford to practice “family values”, even if the rest of what passes for Ukraine society cannot.
The fiery passage westwards of the feared Russians is underway, inexorably. The regime in Ukraine plays the defiance card, which is all they know, being typecast. The rest of the west is in chaos. They can only work with plan A plurals. Anything else is unimaginable. Elections loom everywhere.
The only redeeming thing about dystopia is in being able to recognise it. If enough Ukrainians are left alive to see this light, the big fake nation that is “Ukraine” will implode.
If I’m to make any prediction about what the Kremlin hopes for as this war tilts to R.F. victory, it is not so much a coup as an implosion of the Zelensky regime.
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The Last of the Light Brigade – Rudyard Kipling [1865-1936]
There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.
They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!
They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, “Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites.”
They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.
They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.
The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and “Beggin’ your pardon,” he said,
“You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an’, we thought we’d call an’ tell.
“No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be continued’ and ‘see next page’ o’ the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell ’em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now.”
The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with “the scorn of scorn.”
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.
O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to “honour the charge they made-”
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!
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omg that’s rather brilliant! Did you write that S?
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No, that was done by one of the great masters of the language to mock English pretense.
Rudyard Kipling, a man very much of his empire, a man forced to watch it’s demise because, the English choose financialization over self-enlightened reform.
Speaking of which, the podcast “Fall of Empires” is a very timely video series on how empires decline, I highly recommend it.
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I had no idea Kipling had written such a poem. it’s awesome!
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Marvellous stuff, thanks S. Brennan.
I love Kipling, who was actually born in India.
Perfidious they undoubtedly are, but when it comes to poetry, the English are exceptional.
Still waiting though…….
“for the fatted souls of the English to be scourged with the thing called shame”.
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Unlike today’s popularized writers and those lessor beings that seek such fame, Rudyard Kipling was an original, he had no need to plagiarize, his life was sufficiently unique to ensure the originality of his work if only he remained faithful to himself. And as the above poem reveals, he remained a man of great faith.
Though in this “modern-world” Kipling is now hated by many wealthy “woke” Silicon Valley South Asians with same the vigor that Mark Twain is now hated by wealthy woke “liberals” I remain an unabashed fan.
And here I must pause my rant and acknowledge that in my wanderings, I have met many an English soul who possessed wit, wisdom, mirth and morality. Life is not as black and white as a Hollywood script.
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I love Kipling too. Today’s woke writers and artists can’t hold a candle to the giants of those days. Which includes Twain, but please don’t forget Harriet Beecher Stowe. She and Twain were contemporaries (but Harriet a couple of decades older). One of my beefs against Twain is he said some very nasty things about Harriet when she died. The poor woman became demented with Alzheimer’s in her old age; but instead of pitying her and honoring her great masterpiece, Twain made fun of her. That wasn’t nice.
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And to be clear, Rudyard Kipling had faults, personal and political but, that criticism has to be seen within the context of his time and with respect to his great contribution.
These modern day virtue seekers who spend their days burnishing their rhinestone reputations by denouncing the tangential sins of those who put far more effort into life than they…impoverish us all.
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