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In WW2 thousands of troops could die in a single day and we wouldn't know their names until months or years later. Today a single troop dies and it is the first

• spacebanana7 2mo ago
  The “special military operation” euphemism that both the US/Russia used in Iran/Ukraine does have a degree of truth. These wars are really military engagements with directional objectives rather than truly existential wars with binary outcomes. Modern wars really resemble Rome’s Germanic wars more than the Punic ones.
  • mewpmewp2 2mo ago
    I mean Russia definitely keeps losing very many soldiers every day, I don't think that is comparable at all. It's completely different from US vs Iran.
    • SanjayMehta 2mo ago
      This comment epitomises one of the reasons why the US does not and cannot win any war against a peer adversary. Flawed data.
      • dralley 2mo ago
        I don't even understand what this comment is supposed to be saying in relation to the previous one.
        • SanjayMehta 2mo ago
          Look at the body exchange ratios between The Ukraine and Russia. Jan 29th: 1000 - 38 Feb 26th: 1000 - 35 Apr 9th: 1000 - 41 May 15th: 526 - 41 Jun 18th: 522 - 33 Jul 16th: 501 - 31 Total: 4549 - 219
          • tencentshill 2mo ago
            The only sources I can find for that are all Russian. Wikipedia (Which I assume you will dismiss out of hand) says it's complicated to determine at best, as they both hide information and boost propaganda. At least don't state it as fact. No one actually knows, which is why citing sources is helpful so that weight can be added.
            • helij 2mo ago
              Here's some from BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7ed4rp7x5o and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9jl8vxdy9o) and one from Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-1000-war-dead-rbc-says-2026-04-09/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-hands-ukraine-10...). No reason not to believe these numbers as neither side denied it. The reasons for such numbers mismatch are many and don't always tell the story of who's "winning".
            • SanjayMehta 2mo ago
              Mediazona is a British intelligence asset and even they can't find the Russian bodies that western propaganda hallucinates. While YouTube is full of videos of miles and miles of Ukrainian graveyards. No need to use the Wikipedia excuse.
        • mewpmewp2 2mo ago
          I mean I guess I disagree with the fact that it has any truth about being a "special military operation", when it is really an invasion where a country is trying to gain territory using ground forces etc. It's an invasion and a war, they wanted the binary outcome, they just didn't expect the opponent to push back so strongly.
    • spacebanana7 2mo ago
      Rome lost loads of soldiers in the Germanic wars too. The parallel is that these wars are too expensive (for a non-existential conflict) to take to fulfilment, but also can't easily be disengaged from.
      • ryandvm 2mo ago
        > but also can't easily be disengaged from I guess it depends on what you mean by "easily", but Putin could very much just say "fuck this" and turn off the war machine in one day and it's not at all clear to me that there would be much consequential blowback other than the personal humiliation of one man. Would other countries now decide to attack Russia? Of course not. Would the oligarchs flip out and have him assassinated? No. Would the West disassemble the sanctioning apparatus? Eventually. But the real downside is just simple humiliation and to prevent that, they will continue sacrificing young men. Politics is a fucked up game.
  • deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  • bojan 2mo ago
    Russia's goal is direct annexation of about quarter of the Ukrainian territory and installing a lifelong puppet regime to control the other three quarters. Ukrainians stand to lose not just their voice and any semblance of economic prosperity, but also their very identity. With the exception of extreme cases like Gaza, it doesn't get more binary than that.
    • spacebanana7 2mo ago
      From Ukraine's perspective it's existential for sure. Russia however, just revises its objectives every few months according to how well/badly its prospects on the battlefield are looking.
      • microtonal 2mo ago
        Isn't it more that they started changing objectives because their original objectives turned out to be unattainable? I also think that for Putin it is pretty existential. Otherwise, they would have negotiated a temporary deal, took the pretty large amount of land that they had taken at the end of 2022. Work on another 'project' like Georgia for a few years, do a lot of disinformation campaigns in Europe in the meanwhile and then revisit Ukraine later. That would have a lot of benefits, like no reaming of Europe, no development of Ukraine's capabilities (resulting in a drastic drop in refinement capabilities), etc. But he couldn't. It would make him look weak and would make him vulnerable to a coup. Continuing is the only way for him.
    • spwa4 2mo ago
      Russia's goals have far evolved over the course of the war, and started out comically ridiculous, prompting a great many people to ask questions about the information "bubble" around Putin. Over the past year, I believe most people would agree Russia has lost a LOT of ground when it comes to their war aims, even if not that much territory. 2014: seize Crimea (success, although it no longer serves any purpose) and Sevastopol (total failure, Sevastopol can no longer serve the Russian black sea fleet, and when it comes to the other goal: keep NATO out of the black sea, it's an even bigger failure. Russia has lost control of the skies above the black sea completely and are losing control over the sea of Azov, by withdrawing air defenses. Now go look on the map where the sea of Azov is to see the magnitude of this failure), prevent Ukraine from approaching NATO and EU (complete failure is putting it very mildly), keep Ukraine unstable (succeeded, until Euromaidan revolution, ie. actually this is a failure) 2022: maintain control over Crimea (looks to be failing, as in Ukraine still controls Crimea's water supply), build a land bridge to Crimea (successfull, except that they can't use their land bridge for anything), seize control over Ukraine's government ("denazify" Ukraine), demilitarize Ukraine (as in Ukraine accepts no to have an army. Obviously total and complete failure), and prevent Ukraine and others from coming closer to NATO (obviously total failure, and not just in Ukraine) In June 2026, ie. about 4 weeks ago, Russia once again confirmed these goals. Oh and they were going to do this in 3 days. Then in 3 weeks. Then in 2 months. Then they stopped making predictions. Today is day 1608 of their 3-day attempt.
  • enopod_ 2mo ago
    For Ukraine it's very much an existential war. If they lose, Ukraine will cease to exist. The only way of winning is, well, winning this war. It is also very much a real war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides, a true massacre not seen in Europe since WW2. Trumps stupid war on Iran on the other hand is really just some air strikes, and Iran can win by just not losing, which is easy, because the US will not invade.
    • hackinthebochs 2mo ago
      It's interesting how casually we replace concern for the population with concern for the political entity. No, the Ukrainian identity will not cease to exist with the replacement of the political entity.
      • enopod_ 2mo ago
        Ask Ukrainians what they think about that. Putin made it more than clear that he wants to erase the Ukrainian identity. [1] In this case, the political entity of Ukraine represents the Ukrainian population, which wants to be free, democratic, Europe-oriented, and last but not least, never ever be under Russian dictatorship again. Russias attitude towards Ukraine has turned borderline genocidal since the start of this war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Russians_and_Ukrainians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...
      • mewpmewp2 2mo ago
        What Russia has done in the past is take people who want to hold onto their old national identity and send them to labor camps far away where most will die, and migrate Russians to the areas so as generations go by Ukrainian identity would be fully gone.
      • IAmBroom 2mo ago
        You are stunningly unaware or maliciously ignoring the cultural genocide that Russia is engaging in, inside taken territories. Children are routinely taken from parents and shipped off to Russia. Parents are encarcerated, conscripted, or slaughtered.
  • prmph 2mo ago
    It may not be a lot of dying at once, but some modern wars are rivaling these catastrophic wars of old in casualties. By some counts there have already been at least a million casualties in the Ukraine war, and in Gaza there is probably 100,000 casualties now (military + civilian). And, the conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo over the decades have produced about 5–5.4 million casualties, although accumulated over decades rather than in a single war. So modern conflicts may be lower intensity and lest existential, but they can be every bit as deadly.
    • SanjayMehta 2mo ago
      https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukrainian-casualties/ https://sonar21.com/the-ny-times-lies-about-russian-and-ukra...
      • prmph 2mo ago
        Your article is all over the place and seems to have agenda. It is unable to stay on point and present a coherent argument. I'd rather trust the Nytimes and the UK intelligence who have confirmed these losses, than some random website pushing an agenda. By hey, if it makes you happy to create you own reality, you do you.
        • SanjayMehta 2mo ago
          It's not my article. As for the NYT, read Ashley Rindsberg's "The Gray Lady Winked." And British intelligence? Okay then. Let me chortle into my single malt.
• criddell 2mo ago
  > send entire generations off to die methods of old Of old? Isn't that what Russia is doing right now?
  • Georgelemental 2mo ago
    No, they haven't implemented mass conscription, and won't because even autocrats can't ignore public opinion
    • criddell 2mo ago
      Not sure if the numbers are correct, but it looks like the number of Russians killed in Ukraine is about the same as the number of Americans killed in WW2. Does it matter if the state uses a carrot or stick to send a generation off to die? These may be rookie numbers for Russia, but it's still significant.
      • nradov 2mo ago
        Well there is Russian and then there is Russian. The elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg don't really regard people from the outer provinces as fully Russian, especially not the ethnic minority groups. They're expendable. Most of the casualties have come from those areas so far but they're starting to run out of potential recruits. If the authorities start conscripting men from the core cities and feeding them into the meat grinder then internal dissent will likely increase.
    • giardini 2mo ago
      Russia does conscript men: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat/33415104.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ukraine-conscripts-war-combat...
    • pibaker 2mo ago
      Correct. Conscription in Russia largely happens to rural people, ethnic minorities and convicts. Russia is the way it is because a large enough number of ethnic Russian middle class urbanites don't give a fuck about anything, and Putin knows the moment he starts drafting them he turns them into anti war activists.
• ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  > single troop dies Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It seems literally the most silent thing going on. I really don't know--are casualty numbers reported on a regular basis, from the "front"? I would sometimes, after the fact, learn of repatriation flights or interment ceremonies for fallen soldiers. But only on a sporadic basis. Literally, I think I would be familiar with them by now, since Operation Desert Storm or so. This is not something they put on the news. I think that a comparison of casualties from allied and belligerent troops would be something to report, but if they do, it's just sort of being slotted into some Wikipedia article somewhere, I guess.
  • sokoloff 2mo ago
    I’m fairly surprised you are not seeing them. As a test, I checked for US servicemember deaths in the Middle East in July 2026 and checked against my own recall from casual news consumption. I knew of the helicopter crash (1) and missile attack (2). I did not know of the EOD accident (1) this weekend. So, 3 of 4 I knew about without any particularly directed effort to follow it (and the 4th, I’m sure I’ll see reporting about during the week but wasn’t consuming much content of any type over the weekend).
  • cbm-vic-20 2mo ago
    Right now, the front page of CNN's web site in the US has as the primary headline "Third US service member killed as US ramps up strikes on Iran"[1]. The secondary headline has the names of two of them.[2] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trump https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/world/live-news/iran-war-trum... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers-killed-iran-war-jordan https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/20/politics/us-military-soldiers...
  • basisword 2mo ago
    >> Really, now? What national news do you watch? I have literally never seen current/breaking news stories about the death of American troops in action. It happened about three days ago. I'm not even in the US and it was a top headline here.
• Jamesbeam 2mo ago
  > modern conflicts are absolutely nothing compared to what has happened historically. ‎> vs. the send entire generations off to die methods of old. Feel free to click and zoom yourself through the generational pile of almost a quarter million dead Russians below, armchair general. https://200.zona.media/ https://200.zona.media/
  • jst1fthsdys 2mo ago
    Mocking him while linking to a BBC propaganda piece is funny.
• ponector 2mo ago
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