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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Thank you for your answer, like you say, we shall see in time once the fog of war lifts. It's certainly interesting how different two different views can be, even with the same events being played out in front of them.

I know this is close to the end of the thread's life, but could I ask why you find the Russian statements and figures to be trustworthy (for example, that they're achieving a 6 to 1 death ratio), while the others are clowns? Why not distrust them as well, if you have serious concerns over the accuracy in information in the war in other cases? What is it about the Russian information that makes it more trustworthy than other sources?

I don't find the Russian statements and figures to be trustworthy and I didn't rely on them in my estimates. I look at cemetery expansions, ragtag half-empty battalions being scraped together for this operation or that operation, interviews with Ukrainians who say how many men from their town/village are missing or dead, etc. If I relied on Russian statements, why would I accept Mediazona's confirmed dead estimate as opposed to just taking the Russian numbers?

The people I listed are clowns who make amateur mistakes which they've posted to the internet for years (or at least until Oryx shut down), don't correct themselves, and never learn. I started off the conflict having lots of faith in ISW because of their reporting on the Syrian conflict, but they burned through that good faith long ago. I'm sure I could list many others.

Not believing Ukraine doesn't mean I believe Russia's claims. Thinking Ukraine is lying by an order of magnitude about their casualties doesn't mean I believe Russia's claims. I honestly don't know Russia's casualty claims off the top of my head. From what I've seen in the past, they regularly double count equipment losses.

But your Ukrainian deaths are the Russian ministry figure? No one else is close to that - surely ending up at Russia's figure is just trusting them with extra steps as a result given there's no other source?

Mediazona's (that you trust?) confirmed dead estimates are something like 60k for Ukraine and 120-160k for Russia as of Jan 1st 2025, why do you believe their Russian dead but then think they've lowballed the Ukrainians by nearly an order of magnitude? Sure you can claim they're an underestimate and you've added your own research, but aren't all these other organizations doing actual research too? Could that flip a 2:1 ratio in favor of Ukraine to a 1:5 in favor of Russia? Wouldn't you have to bump Russian dead estimates up too anyway on the same logic?

surely ending up at Russia's figure is just trusting them with extra steps

no