"Ukraine's casualties in Bakhmut were closer to 5000"
- Lol, yeah right... if that's what you think, whatever

"Russia has lost about 350,000 troops"

http://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng
43,460 Russian casualties corroborated by publicly available data as of 2 February
+ 1,176 last two weeks
5,216 total casualties among new recruits

FYI the website above is not a Pro-Putin website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediazona

"Russia is going bankrupt and is fielding antique equipment to try and replace all the tanks etc that they have lost."
- So why Biden and EU throwing a hissyfit if things are going so well?
Ukrainians are being chewed up at an alarming rate.
I heard some people talk about 1 Russian killed per 20 Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, Ukraine prepares for a pointless de-blocking operation which will cost the Ukrainians precious manpower. The Russians know it’s coming and it’s going to be a slaughter.
Ukraine is moving troops from the north and thinning out their defensive lines there.
http://youtu.be/8OoOmXp9UhI

http://twitter.com/Kalibrated_Maps/status/1757267259414970602

Avdeevka is a firebag.
Russia will leave the lid off the cauldron so Ukraine can feed more men into the meat grinder.
Ukraine will take 50% losses just getting in and out of the place because Russia has fire control over the routes in and out.

Baldrick,

You are lying by omission by excluding the parts that contradict you.

From your source:

"Over the past year and a half of monitoring, we’ve concluded that open sources can reveal roughly half of all military deaths. This ratio greatly depends on the region, age, and social status (for example, the deaths of the young tend to be reported on social media more frequently; obituaries are more commonly written for soldiers than for prisoners, etc.), so we don’t consistently rely on it in our calculations. However, it serves as a very rough and approximate estimate: 43,000 obituaries found on social networks suggest approximately 80–90,000 actual deaths.

Therefore, the remaining 230,000 in Burns’ estimate would represent the wounded, which also appears quite realistic given the number of fatalities. Military experts often cite a “3 to 1” ratio, meaning three wounded for every one killed (based on the World War II data). However, the wounded-to-killed ratio greatly depends on the nature of combat on the ground and battlefield conditions. In our joint investigation with Meduza last year, we found that the ratio to the killed could range from 4 to 1 to 1.7 to 1 (if we are counting only severe injuries).

In the last two weeks, 15 military personnel ranked Lieutenant Colonel and above were added to our list. As always, this doesn’t mean all these individuals died within the last fortnight: the exact dates of death for five are unknown, two died in January, and the rest are casualties from June to November 2023."

You have also failed to address the collapsing Russian economy or the rapid depletion of tanks, APVs, helicopters, jets etc.

What about Ukrainian deaths, we're talking some 400,000+
And they are probably taking a lot more than 3 to 1 ratio casualties.
I've heard there's some 100,000 amputees.

Russian economy's ok, doing a whole lot better than Europe, and the situation has been revised upwards by the IMF several times.

Sure Russias lost men and military equipment, but they can make more - military equipment, and they have a huge population with which to get new recruits and have the time to train them properly as well.

Last year the only significant battle at this time was in Bakhmut.
Right now Avdeevka is not the only place in Ukraine under significant attack.
Russia is attacking and making gains across the entire front line.

Baldrick,

More lies I see. Russian casualties to Ukrainian casualties are at least 5 dead or wounded Russians to 1 Ukrainian.

Also:

http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russia-sanction-oil-tankers-shadow-fleet-crude-exports-price-cap-2024-2

Secondary sanctions starting to bite:

"Efforts to clamp down on vessels breaching Western restrictions on Russia are showing results, with nearly half of sanctioned oil tankers now idle, Bloomberg reported.

Of the 50 tankers targeted by the US Treasury since October, 21 have failed to load on new cargo.

These ships fell into Western crosshairs for trading Moscow's crude above the $60 price cap, a Group of Seven measure implemented to limit Russian energy revenue. Such restrictions took form in response to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022; additional curbs include caps on refined products.

But the system has faltered since its introduction, as some companies continue ferrying Russian crude above the set price limit. It's partially done through the Kremlin's "shadow fleet," a collective of vessels with hard-to-track owners that circumvent the use of Western insurance and tankers.

To counteract this, the Treasury sanctioned eight individual vessels between last October and December. Before 2023's end, another 24 tankers were added to the list, as the department focused on a shipping company owned by the Russian state-controlled Sovcomflot, Bloomberg said.

The United Arab Emirates-based Hennesea Holdings, owner of 18 ships, was sanctioned in January. Most recently, the Sovcomflot tanker NS Leader was named on Thursday, causing the carrier to reverse course near Portugal and head back toward Russia.

It's a crackdown that's weighing on crude prices, as Russia's Urals crude is sinking toward deeper discounts against Dated Brent. Meanwhile, for tankers still trading, US sanctions have compelled some markets to rethink the imports."

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/02/07/major-chinese-bank-halts-all-settlements-with-russia-vedomosti-a84001

A key Chinese bank used by Russian importers has stopped all settlements with Russia, setting the stage for a “logistics collapse” in the coming weeks, the business daily Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing anonymous businesspeople and financial consultants familiar with the matter.

Chouzhou Commercial Bank, which became the main transaction channel for Russian importers after the invasion of Ukraine, reportedly notified clients last week that it was terminating relations with all Russian and Belarusian organizations.

With Chinese New Year scheduled for Feb. 10-17, an “almost imminent logistics collapse” will hobble exports to Russia at least until March, one of Vedomosti's sources was quoted as saying.

There is “very little chance” that Russian imports from China would resume after the public holiday, said Pavel Bazhanov, an expert in Chinese law.

Turkish Banks Close Russian Corporate Accounts Over Secondary Sanctions – Vedomosti

Chouzhou Commercial Bank’s transactions stopped across major payment systems, including SWIFT, China’s CIPS and Russia’s SPFS, one of Vedomosti’s sources was quoted as saying.

Legal expert Bazhanov said the Chinese cross-border payment systems PingPong and Xtransfer have also halted settlements.

“Even if the movement of money through national systems isn’t visible to the Americans or Europeans, it’s all clearly reflected in the reporting that Western counterparts may demand from the bank,” another source was quoted as saying.

Russia’s Central Bank, the People’s Bank of China and Chouzhou did not respond to requests for comment, according to Vedomosti.

Later on Wednesday, the Kremlin acknowledged that Russian companies were having problems with Chinese banks.

“We have a dialogue with our Chinese friends and, of course, we will solve all the problems that arise,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a briefing call Wednesday.

In December, Washington threatened to cut off access to its financial system for foreign banks linked to companies that support Russia’s defence industry.

Beijing has not joined Western sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, and some of the country's largest banks meanwhile have extended billions of dollars worth of credit to Russia since the start of the war.

China has, complied with Western sanctions