EPTOn January 27 2026 01:22 KwarK wrote:
Ok, few things going on here.
1. You're mixing up casualties and kills. Zelenskyy/Ukraine are talking about casualties, not kills.
Ukraine asserted total Russian casualties on Dec 31 2025 of 1,207,910 and 1,172,860 on Nov 30. That's 35,050 for the month, it's probably where the 35k is coming from. We should treat this number as a ceiling and as a problematic one at that. It assumes that every claim is accurate, that there aren't accidental duplicate claims, and that there are no bad actors claiming to overperform in what is still a legacy Soviet military and culture.
2. You're using "confirmed kills" when you mean claimed casualties. I'm not saying that Ukraine substantially overclaims, I normally treat their numbers as reasonable because there are secondary sources that we can use as evidence to support them. For example we can infer the attrition of the Russian army by looking at recruitment rates and total army size. But confirmed has a specific meaning. There are open source intelligence projects devoted to confirmed kill analysis that look at probate records, obituaries, social media posts and so forth within Russia. Their work lags months behind Ukrainian claims. There are absolutely not 35,000 confirmed kills in December, confirmed December kills will be coming in for months.
3. Rutte's numbers don't make any sense. He is, without any source or reference, asserting substantially higher kill rates than Ukraine's own military in wartime.
I'm assuming nobody who has posted in this topic would mistake me for a pro Russian. But 35k dead Russians in a month is just not in line with what we know about the war, it would be a dramatic change from what has been a very consistent monthly trend. To me it smells like a classic example of the youtube information game that we all know and love from this war (like when any Russian killed becomes 200 dead Russians because Russia's military uses 200 as their internal code for KIA). The official Ukrainian military number for all casualties for December is 35,050. That goes through the youtube information game and comes out as 35k confirmed kills.
Ok, few things going on here.
1. You're mixing up casualties and kills. Zelenskyy/Ukraine are talking about casualties, not kills.
Ukraine asserted total Russian casualties on Dec 31 2025 of 1,207,910 and 1,172,860 on Nov 30. That's 35,050 for the month, it's probably where the 35k is coming from. We should treat this number as a ceiling and as a problematic one at that. It assumes that every claim is accurate, that there aren't accidental duplicate claims, and that there are no bad actors claiming to overperform in what is still a legacy Soviet military and culture.
2. You're using "confirmed kills" when you mean claimed casualties. I'm not saying that Ukraine substantially overclaims, I normally treat their numbers as reasonable because there are secondary sources that we can use as evidence to support them. For example we can infer the attrition of the Russian army by looking at recruitment rates and total army size. But confirmed has a specific meaning. There are open source intelligence projects devoted to confirmed kill analysis that look at probate records, obituaries, social media posts and so forth within Russia. Their work lags months behind Ukrainian claims. There are absolutely not 35,000 confirmed kills in December, confirmed December kills will be coming in for months.
3. Rutte's numbers don't make any sense. He is, without any source or reference, asserting substantially higher kill rates than Ukraine's own military in wartime.
I'm assuming nobody who has posted in this topic would mistake me for a pro Russian. But 35k dead Russians in a month is just not in line with what we know about the war, it would be a dramatic change from what has been a very consistent monthly trend. To me it smells like a classic example of the youtube information game that we all know and love from this war (like when any Russian killed becomes 200 dead Russians because Russia's military uses 200 as their internal code for KIA). The official Ukrainian military number for all casualties for December is 35,050. That goes through the youtube information game and comes out as 35k confirmed kills.
Rutte said 20k-25k deaths. Depending on the killed/wounded ratio that can be consistent with Ukraine's casualty numbers. Previously that ratio was estimated as 1.1 wounded for every death but obituaries have spiked since October. With 10k-12k obituaries in October to December.
30k-35k is too high but 20k-25k is possible.
