NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
An interesting game theory take on the current situation with the US and RU. Kinda wild but in this perspective it makes sense why the US has left Ukraine for Russia and why they're invading Iran.
Would be really hilarious if Trump really wanted to achieve this Greater North America vs Third Rome Russia new world order. The grand plan is full of holes though and definitely not something you should rush into without preparation.
Haven't watched this particular video, but I do find it fascinating how a high school teacher/class in China is (publicly no less) engaging with stuff like this at this level in a foreign language. From what I understand it's not even really a "Premier School" more "experimental".
I mean, who knows how things pan out on human rights (it's not like the US has been great, even if you only start counting post Civil Rights Movement) but China is certainly looking like it might be a more competent potential hegemon.
There's a decent chance that it's better yeah, but also we're probably not transitioning from one to the other smoothly like this. There's probably a lot of conflict on the way there and it becomes impossible to predict outcomes because of that, entirely dependant on who wins and loses and who represents what side at any given moment.
Yeah, sure would be nice if the US (and Europe) got into a new Quality of Life Cold War with China (and parts of Africa). I can't really imagine a better way it could go.
I've been thinking about this as well. It was important for the political health of our societies to have an alternative model that could be pointed to in order to put a leash on some of the excesses of our systems. If there's a superpower where workers are treated better, this limits the options of treating workers badly for the other superpower too, as there's a clear alternative to point to and workers can easily picture it and rebel against you. Now that the alternative has been shown to be shit and it's broken down, there's no longer anything to point to as an alternative and capitalists can go full exploitative, there's no other narrative to oppose them, except like, should we exploit brown people more than white people or not, and stuff like this that they don't care about at all. This is for sure one of the major drives in pushing societies to the right, the lack of an alternative model.
If you could recreate the cold war climate today that would for sure be beneficial, but unfortunately China is a lot less of an alternative model, it's very much still capitalism with a few small differences, so I'm skeptical that they can be used as a replacement for the soviet union in the same way.
Fair enough. I'm a bit curious about those "few small differences" and whether something like "class consciousness" is among them and/or presents any opportunity in your view?
An interesting game theory take on the current situation with the US and RU. Kinda wild but in this perspective it makes sense why the US has left Ukraine for Russia and why they're invading Iran.
Would be really hilarious if Trump really wanted to achieve this Greater North America vs Third Rome Russia new world order. The grand plan is full of holes though and definitely not something you should rush into without preparation.
By the way, that guy is not a professor. He's got a bachelor's degree in English Literature. ;p
I posted it more as a curio than anything else. I do enjoy exploring some wilder arguments and conspiracy theories at times for fun.
Dude is a CCP propagandist. Better to stay away from them, because it has been shown to influence you even if you know its BS.
Thanks, good to know. My YT feed is so random that I get stuff from both sides of the fence and sometimes it's hard to tell if something is just comedy or serious stuff. I treated this one as more of a comedy.
Oh, well, seems like the oil prices are regressing back slowly, they won't go all the way down to where they were before the attack on Iran for a while, since the damage to the infrastructure to the gulf can't just be repaired easily, but the conflict ending sooner rather then later is definitely good news for Ukraine.
They played this perfectly, an amazing month for Ukraine, they bought a lot of good will by sending their anti-drone and missile experts without a second thought, and I'm sure a significant amount of investments is going to come their way as a result of it.
In the meantime, the absolutely best army in Europe showed why it has this status by pushing a lot of the front lines back and negating a whole winters worth of Russian advances in a month. Hopefully, now they will hunker down and weather the Russian summer offensive, if, of course, Russia can overcome significant recruitment and money issues enough to actually push in any real way.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to posting the next dead body exchange and will have to turn this into a double update. But I’ll use this as a reason to delve a little deeper into what body exchanges tell us about how things are going on the ground, and they are a very good indicator. Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
We first need to examine the conditions under which one side in a conflict will gain physical possession of the dead from the opposing side. This can only occur by capturing, securing, and clearing the territory that enemy soldiers once occupied and where they now lie.
This can take place in both defensive and offensive scenarios - for instance, if Red launches an attack and captures a position, and then Blue counterattacks and swiftly reclaims that position, Blue will be the one to recover the bodies of the enemy. Naturally, this count of retrieved bodies will not accurately represent total casualties, as there are numerous instances where soldiers may perish within their own lines or in the neutral zone.
Additionally, not every military is equally diligent in sanitizing the battlefield of its own dead. The side that leaves more of its dead behind has more of its dead bodies pick up by the opposing side.
With all this in account, it becomes clear what the relative count of enemy bodies signifies: victories in close combat. The side that possesses the greater number of bodies is the one that is more effectively overpowering enemy forces - this holds true for both offensive and defensive operations. If a defender is successfully repelling assaults and executing counterattacks, firmly maintaining their position and forcing the enemy to pay dearly for every inch gained, they too will accumulate a significant number of enemy bodies.
Following the counts with exchanges of bodies one can clearly see three phases in the war (2022 the same as 2023 just the pic would be too small):
2022 was practically even in terms of bodies exchanged, reflecting what occurred on the ground - a relatively evenly-matched battle in which both sides secured considerable amounts of terrain from the other over the course of the year.
2023 that not many bodies seem to have actually changed hands during very large battles – the 100 day counteroffensive, the battle for Bahmut ect. the fighting that year was extremely positional and static, with gains often measured in meters. Both sides had ample opportunity to recover their own dead and retreat in an orderly manner that year.
2024 continued the trend of 2023 until June, when the ratio dramatically increased in favor of Russia. This coincided with the Russian attack north of Kharkov and with Russian troops pushing out into southwest Donetsk through Avdeevka. It increased dramatically again in favor of Russia after the AFU launched their offensive in Kursk in August 2024 - demonstrating that successful defensive action will also net large numbers of enemy bodies
2025 saw the final collapse of UKR positions in Kursk and multiple larger settlements like Pokrovsk falling after sieges with wider and faster Russian advancements
On November 20 2025 23:37 zeo wrote: The November exchange of bodies between Kiev and Moscow took place today
KYIV, Nov 20 (Reuters) - Ukraine and Russia have carried out a new exchange of bodies of dead soldiers, Ukrainian officials and Russian state media said on Thursday. Ukraine said it received 1,000 bodies and Russian state news agency TASS quoted an unidentified source as saying Moscow got back 30.
16.370 UKR bodies exchanged for 499 Russian ones if they are added to the tally from the previous post, the current exchange rate is 32,8 UKR bodies to 1 RUS
The first exchange of bodies in 2026 took place today. 29.01.
The new tally being 19.370 UKR bodies to 613, or 31.6 dead Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian, an uptick in the amount of Russian bodies that can be attributed to the small counteroffensives launched by Kiev forces by the end of winter that have been mostly reversed by now.
The last time you talked about exchanges of bodies, I registered the amount of confirmed dead russian soldiers that mediazona had logged on their site. It was 168142. Today that number is 206202.
If you have to come up with some weird mathematical extrapolation calculations to explain why what appears to be obviously true to the casual observer is actually false you're probably not doing as well as you think you're doing.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
In the past, it might have just been that Russia was advancing. Whoever is advancing gets basically all of the corpses, because those tend to stay where they were killed.
Would be interesting to see how this develops now that the front is moving in the opposite direction.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
In the past, it might have just been that Russia was advancing. Whoever is advancing gets basically all of the corpses, because those tend to stay where they were killed.
Would be interesting to see how this develops now that the front is moving in the opposite direction.
No. Please. Now he'll talk for pages about Pokrovsk again. Or maybe Russian media has a new favourite town to talk about for him to echo. Regardless, it'll be an irrelevant front that Russia is throwing bodies at to capture in order to move the front 20 meters further west in about 6 years of fighting.
Pretty grim from Russian perspective that our resident propagandist doesn't have anything new to post so he is on a 6 month streak of posting irrelevant numbers that in no way reflect any real picture of what is going on in the war.
Thank you Zeo for your invaluable contributions of regurgitating the vatnik propaganda, I for one appreciate it because the worse it is more obvious it makes how many issues Russia is facing.
On April 10 2026 02:57 zeo wrote: The new tally being 19.370 UKR bodies to 613, or 31.6 dead Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian, an uptick in the amount of Russian bodies that can be attributed to the small counteroffensives launched by Kiev forces by the end of winter that have been mostly reversed by now.
That's interesting, but we know of at least 100k Russian KIAs over the last two years. This ratio would mean some 6 million Ukrainian men are now effectively dead or too badly wounded to serve. Given the demographics, you are saying that Ukraine has physically run out of men that are eligible to fight in the army.
Either the Ukrainian frontline is now held by women and children or this methodology is badly flawed.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
In the past, it might have just been that Russia was advancing. Whoever is advancing gets basically all of the corpses, because those tend to stay where they were killed.
No, the logic of this doesn't make any sense. There are innumerable reasons why one side could be collecting more corpses and returning them than the other besides higher casualty rates. Perhaps it's an intimidation/psychological strategy to make it appear the other side has more casualties. Perhaps one side doesn't want to spend as much manpower doing it. Perhaps one side is using more of the weapons that makes body identification difficult. Perhaps one side is holding them as a bargaining chip for when peace negotiations come.
This is the equivalent of my neighbor having a heart attack while in the pool at my backyard pool party, noting that my pool has a diameter of 10 feet and the Pacific Ocean has an average diameter of 5.81 × 10⁷ feet, and concluding that there is therefore probably 5.8 million heart attack victims floating around the Pacific at this moment.
On April 10 2026 03:07 Nebuchad wrote: Finaaaaally zeo is back what took you so long
The last time you talked about exchanges of bodies, I registered the amount of confirmed dead russian soldiers that mediazona had logged on their site. It was 168142. Today that number is 206202.
On the one hand, we have a figure confirmed by both sides. And on the other a number from a media source run by Pussy Riot and funded by the British Foreign Office. We can say with quite a bit of certainty that the number of dead Russians is between 613 and 206202 though.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
This is true and Ive mentioned it before, there were Russian army sources mentioning they hauled in 14-15 thousand UKR bodies after the Sudza pocket collapsed but how many they actually did pick up there we might not know until a long time from now. Obviously they have a lot more than 1000 bodies to hand over and are milking it. The number of Russian bodies handed back is a reliable yardstick for the short term though. Its a variable that shows their successes that month at the contact line.
If the UKR makes any notable counterattack or advance it will show up in the body exchange as seen in the 100 day counteroffensive in 2023.
edit: could the Russians have only picked up like 60 UKR bodies this month and just pulled 940 Ukrainians out of storage to make up the numbers? Sure. Still, that would also indicate previous months were much worse for Ukraine than first thought.
On April 10 2026 02:57 zeo wrote: The new tally being 19.370 UKR bodies to 613, or 31.6 dead Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian, an uptick in the amount of Russian bodies that can be attributed to the small counteroffensives launched by Kiev forces by the end of winter that have been mostly reversed by now.
That's interesting, but we know of at least 100k Russian KIAs over the last two years. This ratio would mean some 6 million Ukrainian men are now effectively dead or too badly wounded to serve. Given the demographics, you are saying that Ukraine has physically run out of men that are eligible to fight in the army.
Either the Ukrainian frontline is now held by women and children or this methodology is badly flawed.
On April 10 2026 02:57 zeo wrote: Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all this in account, it becomes clear what the relative count of enemy bodies signifies: victories in close combat. The side that possesses the greater number of bodies is the one that is more effectively overpowering enemy forces - this holds true for both offensive and defensive operations. If a defender is successfully repelling assaults and executing counterattacks, firmly maintaining their position and forcing the enemy to pay dearly for every inch gained, they too will accumulate a significant number of enemy bodies.
On April 11 2026 02:14 zeo wrote: The number of Russian bodies handed back is a reliable yardstick for the short term though. Its a variable that shows their successes that month at the contact line.
If Ukraine sends out 1 guy to pick up Russian bodies and he picks up 43 one month but 46 the next month, the most logical conclusion is he had a day off the first month lol
On April 10 2026 03:07 Nebuchad wrote: Finaaaaally zeo is back what took you so long
The last time you talked about exchanges of bodies, I registered the amount of confirmed dead russian soldiers that mediazona had logged on their site. It was 168142. Today that number is 206202.
On the one hand, we have a figure confirmed by both sides. And on the other a number from a media source run by Pussy Riot and funded by the British Foreign Office. We can say with quite a bit of certainty that the number of dead Russians is between 613 and 206202 though.
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
This is true and Ive mentioned it before, there were Russian army sources mentioning they hauled in 14-15 thousand UKR bodies after the Sudza pocket collapsed but how many they actually did pick up there we might not know until a long time from now. Obviously they have a lot more than 1000 bodies to hand over and are milking it. The number of Russian bodies handed back is a reliable yardstick for the short term though. Its a variable that shows their successes that month at the contact line.
If the UKR makes any notable counterattack or advance it will show up in the body exchange as seen in the 100 day counteroffensive in 2023.
edit: could the Russians have only picked up like 60 UKR bodies this month and just pulled 940 Ukrainians out of storage to make up the numbers? Sure. Still, that would also indicate previous months were much worse for Ukraine than first thought.
On April 10 2026 02:57 zeo wrote: The new tally being 19.370 UKR bodies to 613, or 31.6 dead Ukrainian bodies to 1 Russian, an uptick in the amount of Russian bodies that can be attributed to the small counteroffensives launched by Kiev forces by the end of winter that have been mostly reversed by now.
That's interesting, but we know of at least 100k Russian KIAs over the last two years. This ratio would mean some 6 million Ukrainian men are now effectively dead or too badly wounded to serve. Given the demographics, you are saying that Ukraine has physically run out of men that are eligible to fight in the army.
Either the Ukrainian frontline is now held by women and children or this methodology is badly flawed.
On April 10 2026 02:57 zeo wrote: Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
~~~~~~~~~~
With all this in account, it becomes clear what the relative count of enemy bodies signifies: victories in close combat. The side that possesses the greater number of bodies is the one that is more effectively overpowering enemy forces - this holds true for both offensive and defensive operations. If a defender is successfully repelling assaults and executing counterattacks, firmly maintaining their position and forcing the enemy to pay dearly for every inch gained, they too will accumulate a significant number of enemy bodies.
Please read these parts again
You can watch unique daily videos of casualties and see they are much higher than you are insinuating. There is also a guy who does it every day and only counts the ones he can confirm (and he leaves the videos for you to check), also wildly higher than are insinuating.
You don’t actually believe what you are saying right? Like there has to be some real progress you can point too that is better than this. Even Russian war bloggers are not close to as optimistic as you 🤣
Of course, this tally of recovered bodies is not going to reflect exact total casualties, anyone trying to fallacy that strawman into being is purposefully being a moron. It is, however, a strong indicator of how things are going.
Ok, but why? Maybe one side is just doing more work to recover bodies? The casualty ratio is obviously not Ukraine 32:1 Russia, so what's the point in attempting to extrapolate anything from this? It looks like Russia is just giving 1000 Ukrainian bodies back at a time regardless of how the war's going.
In the past, it might have just been that Russia was advancing. Whoever is advancing gets basically all of the corpses, because those tend to stay where they were killed.
No, the logic of this doesn't make any sense. There are innumerable reasons why one side could be collecting more corpses and returning them than the other besides higher casualty rates. Perhaps it's an intimidation/psychological strategy to make it appear the other side has more casualties. Perhaps one side doesn't want to spend as much manpower doing it. Perhaps one side is using more of the weapons that makes body identification difficult. Perhaps one side is holding them as a bargaining chip for when peace negotiations come.
This is the equivalent of my neighbor having a heart attack while in the pool at my backyard pool party, noting that my pool has a diameter of 10 feet and the Pacific Ocean has an average diameter of 5.81 × 10⁷ feet, and concluding that there is therefore probably 5.8 million heart attack victims floating around the Pacific at this moment.
Russia might also not want the bodies back. They don’t have to pay death bonus when they can just say someone is awol or alive.
On April 10 2026 03:07 Nebuchad wrote: Finaaaaally zeo is back what took you so long
The last time you talked about exchanges of bodies, I registered the amount of confirmed dead russian soldiers that mediazona had logged on their site. It was 168142. Today that number is 206202.
On the one hand, we have a figure confirmed by both sides. And on the other a number from a media source run by Pussy Riot and funded by the British Foreign Office. We can say with quite a bit of certainty that the number of dead Russians is between 613 and 206202 though.
We absolutely cannot say that, no. Every single one of those 206202, as far as I know, comes with an obituary published somewhere in Russia, usually on social media, so the source is clearly delineated. Unless you think Pussy Riot created 206202 media accounts to mourn fake deaths, that's not a powerful response at all.
Also keep in mind that this methodology of counting deaths is by definition an undercount, so the thing that we can say for sure is that more than 206202 Russians have died, most likely quite a lot more.
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFensP8bQAAiDNV?format=jpg&name=medium)
