‘Absolutely catastrophic’: Has Russia really lost more than 350,000 men in Ukraine?

Russia has lost an estimated 352,000 troops in Ukraine according to verified obituary data from the independent Russian outlet Media Zona, making it the deadliest European conflict since the Second World War. A fragile three-day ceasefire is holding. Putin called the war coming to an end. Keir Starmer appears to be on the verge of resigning. Trump is heading to Beijing. And the common thread running through all of it is energy.

In this segment from The Really Big Show, Jim Csek and Iain Burns dig into the Media Zona casualty figures for Russia in Ukraine. Unlike most wartime casualty numbers, these are based on actual obituaries, actual announcements, and actual data collected systematically by journalists operating inside Russia itself. The 352,000 figure is therefore very hard to dismiss. Jim and Iain put it in historical context: the Soviet Union was in Afghanistan for ten years and lost a tiny fraction of that number. Nothing in the post-World War Two Soviet or Russian military history comes close. And critically, the demographic context is completely different. In the 1940s the Soviet Union had an exploding population. Russia in 2022 was already a dying country with catastrophically low birth rates, terrible life expectancy, rampant alcoholism, and some of the worst HIV rates in Europe. Losing 352,000 mostly young men from that population is a wound that will not heal in a generation.They also cover Marco Rubio's plain-spoken response to Zelensky's claim that security guarantees were tied to territorial withdrawal, noting that Rubio flatly said that was not true and explained the American position clearly. Jim and Iain note the contrast with Carney: Rubio gives you an answer in plain English. You know what he said. You know what the position is. That is not how the Canadian government communicates.

On Trump heading to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping, Jim and Iain note that China has been pushing hard on Canada specifically and that the events unfolding in Taiwan, Iran, and Ukraine all lead back to the same foundation: energy. Every country in the world that matters right now is operating from an energy position. Canada, sitting on one of the richest energy endowments on earth, has impostors running it who cannot approve a pipeline.

If the deadliest European conflict since World War Two, a fragile Middle East ceasefire, and an energy crisis pushing India into austerity all point to the same conclusion about why cheap reliable energy is the most important thing in the world right now, why is Canada still debating a carbon capture condition?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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