Rubio Claims Russia Suffered 100k KIA in Six Months, Ukrainian Casualties Remain 'Vague'
The topic of casualties is one we periodically revisit when necessary. Now is such a time, as Marco Rubio has made the absurd claim—coordinated with MSM outlets—that the Russian Army has suffered a whopping 100,000 deaths just since January of this year alone; purely deaths, not even total casualties:
This was immediately backed up by new articles, like the following from the Economist, which likewise claims Russia is experiencing its deadliest year on the front yet, with 30,000+ deaths just in the past couple months alone:
The above article is a particularly egregious example. Just take a look at their methodology, or lack thereof. This small extract constitutes the entirety of their ‘scientific’ premise for Russian losses:
There is no official tally of losses on either side. But our daily war tracker offers some clues. Our satellite data and shifts to areas of control suggest when the fighting is intensifying. This lines up well with more than 200 credible estimates of casualties from Western governments and independent researchers. By combining this data we can, for the first time, provide a credible daily death toll—or an estimate of estimates.
In short, they claim their satellite data alerts them to where fighting happens to ‘intensify’, and from that they—by some incredible leap of logic—infer that Russian forces are experiencing massive losses. The baffling part is that this facile methodology should apply to the AFU in parallel as well, yet when it comes to Ukraine’s losses, the Economist’s staff are without even a hint of curiosity:
Read that again: satellite data showing “intense fighting” inherently points to Russian losses merely on the assumption that any fighting, as a general rule, results in Russian but not Ukrainian losses. This is an astoundingly juvenile, biased, and to be frank, fraudulent, level of analysis.
Recall this previous revelation, which tells us everything about the West’s info-hygiene:
These publications claim to have such ‘sensitive’ attunements to the battlefield fluctuations as to give exact Russian figures, but when it comes to Ukraine, they are suddenly lacking data.
The fact is, there’s a reason why MediaZona very abruptly changed up their methodology to include “projected” deaths rather than real counted ones, as done previously—because contrary to this coordinated propaganda campaign, Russian losses have actually been at the lowest in a long time. This is precisely the reason such an orchestrated campaign was necessary: Ukraine is badly losing, and the only remaining aspect of the war the propagandists could feasibly utilize to try and spin the narrative are the casualty figures, because they are typically the most ‘subjective’ and ambiguous in nature—which makes them perfect fodder for devious manipulation.
Presently, MediaZona has the total Russian death toll at ~117k as of early July:
If you highlight only January 1st to present, you get 9,849 confirmed deaths:
You can do this yourself at the official site to confirm.
That means through the first six months of this year, they have registered a mere 9,849 Russian deaths, which amounts to 1,641 per month. Western and Ukrainian publications, on the other hand, claim Russia is suffering that many deaths per day. The discrepancy shows an unprecedented detachment from reality.
We do know MediaZona has a ‘lag’ because it takes time to confirm most recent deaths, and so the number will likely rise, but probably not by an inordinate amount. There is no evidence whatsoever that Russia is taking anywhere near the kinds of losses the West claims. In fact, someone made a good point: since it is Ukraine that purports that 70-90% of their kills on Russian soldiers come by way of drones, they should be able to show all these vast amounts of losses via drone camera recordings; yet there is nothing—and we know the AFU loves nothing more than showing off its ‘successes’.
In an article two months ago, I had highlighted the timeline of the Russian Army’s growth from Ukraine’s own sources. It went as follows:
2023: Bloomberg announces Russian troop count at 420,000.
2024: Head of Ukraine’s military intelligence tells Economist the number had swelled to 514,000.
Early 2025: It was 600,000.
And what do we have now, at the midpoint of 2025? Straight from Zelensky’s own mouth:
So, to reiterate and simplify:
400k troops in 2023, 500k in 2024, 600k in early 2025, and already 700k in mid-2025.
This is all from Ukrainian sources, the originals of which you can find in my previous article here.
How can Russia possibly be suffering a claimed 100,000 dead in just six months—as per Rubio—when it is literally gaining over 100,000 per year?
In order for Russia to suffer 100k deaths in six months—annualized to 200k per year—and still gain 100k+ men per year, Russian recruitment would have to be staggering, given the contract churn we outlined previously. Hard to imagine people willingly signing up under the dark cloud of such losses, while in Ukraine—suffering “far fewer casualties”—people have to be forcibly kidnapped from the streets and herded into vans like cattle.
Strange how it’s Ukrainian cemeteries that continue to infamously fill up, rather than Russian ones, and how the past year’s ratio of dead body exchanges has jumped to such astronomical figures as to be off the charts:
Any honest journalist would pucker at such incongruities in the data—but alas, that species is about as common as a three-legged emu.
As a recent glimpse into Russian losses during active assaults, here is one honest post from Russian military sources about a settlement that was captured. They write that they suffered four “200s” during the operation:
There are many such assaults per day, so you can multiply the four by the daily amount to get a reasonable count—but it certainly isn’t hundreds, much less thousands.
—
Neue Zürcher Zeitung has a new piece which spells out that Ukraine only has two options to prevent collapse:
Now the Kremlin is going all out.
The Russian operational plan aims to tear apart the Ukrainian ground forces. The general staff in Kiev still has two options to prevent a breakthrough.
They begin by aptly noting that Putin spelled out the strategy himself at a recent forum:
“They already have too few personnel,” Putin went on to analyze, “and they are withdrawing their forces there, which are already lacking in the decisive theaters of armed conflict.” Putin is making little effort to conceal his operational intentions: the Russian General Staff wants to tear the Ukrainian army apart - and then attempt a breakthrough at a suitable point.
Then they reveal the two options Ukraine faces, which I’ll annotate:
Sirski, on the other hand, still has two basic options for saving Ukraine from a military defeat in the current situation:
1.Delay: The aim is to lose as little ground as possible during the Russian summer offensive and to avoid encirclement of larger troop units. In the fall, the front could then be consolidated and a starting point for negotiations created. At present, Kiev appears to be pursuing this course - in the hope that the USA will resume its military aid.
Here, they admit that Ukraine’s best chance is merely to stall until “negotiations” can be effected; but we know Russia has zero incentive for such a thing, unless you kowtow to the fake figures of Russian losses and believe Russia is “on its last leg”, as per Strelkov and the rest of the doomer clan.
Their second option is to withdraw to the new defensive line reportedly being constructed a few dozen kilometers behind the current LOC:
2. operational withdrawal: The Ukrainian ground forces could gradually withdraw from the front and take up new positions protected by natural and artificial obstacles. The aim is to prevent a capitulation and to maintain the army to protect sovereignty even in the event of an unfavorable outcome to the negotiations. One indication that this option is being examined is the construction of a Ukrainian fortification line 20 kilometers behind the front from the Kharkiv area to Zaporizhia in the southwest of Ukraine.
There are not enough forces for a surprise anywhere along the front, and the pinpricks in the depths of the Russian area will hardly have any effect except in the information area. The Ukrainians lack fighter aircraft such as the F-35 to gain at least partial air superiority. In addition, ammunition for the Himars missile artillery, the Taurus guided missiles, supplies for air defense - the list is well known in Western capitals.
Europe has gone on summer vacation and Trump is at least considering sending defensive weapons to Ukraine again. But the risk of a Russian breakthrough is growing. If a gap opens up somewhere, the occupying forces can suddenly maneuver and use the bridgeheads at Sumi and Kharkiv for large-scale operations. Sirski then gradually ran out of options.
However, the decision to switch from delay to operational withdrawal in good time does not lie with the head of the army, but with President Volodimir Zelensky in Kiev and his dilemma: between military necessity and the political principle of hoping that the Western allies will stand by their big words after all. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is going all out - politically and militarily.
But what would that do? Just like the inherent nonsensical nature of the first option, the second would hardly give Russia pause. We know Ukraine relies on PR to maintain continuity and casualty figures are one facet of this which can be deftly hidden, while territorial changes cannot. This means the organ grinder-in-chief Zelensky would prefer to quietly keep composting thousands of his men while feigning ‘strong resistance’ and pretending that Russia is ‘making no gains’. If a sudden large-scale breakthrough swallowed up a chunk of Ukrainian territory, Western support would likely collapse over night as Ukraine would be deemed a dead case.
—
Lastly, in anticipation of Trump’s supposed “big announcement” on Monday, several MSM publications are reporting that Trump is preparing to launch an unprecedented global oil embargo against Russia:
It describes a fancifully unrealistic plan to shackle any country in the world that buys oil or uranium from Russia with a massive 500% tariff. The chances of this passing are laughable, as it would destroy the economies of the US and its allies, rather than harming Russia.
The squabbles over ‘control’ discussed last time rear their head again:
Senators have said they would be willing to grant Trump the power to waive the tariff for up to 180 days, provided there was congressional oversight. The White House is, however, insisting that Congress should have no power to intervene if the president decided to end the sanctions.
Maximilian Hess, a fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute, predicted Trump would baulk at the 500 per cent tariff in the bill, which would be equivalent to a global embargo on Russian oil.
Hess elaborates:
“As it’s written, in my view it’s just too strong to ever be used, unless Trump gets out there and says, ‘We need to face the risk that Russia poses to Europe and the globe and we have to accept oil prices of closer to $100 or maybe even higher’,” he said. “Which I just cannot see Trump doing.”
The reason Trump wants such control is because he’s merely using the threat of these laughable ‘sanctions’ to try and frighten Putin into concessions, and wants the ability to immediately pull out, TACO-style, as soon as it backfires. The neocon segment of Congress—Graham, Blumenthal, and co.—want to deviously ‘bake in’ the sanctions by having power over them, so that Trump is forced into a major confrontation with Russia; obviously, the freewheeling deep state moles in Congress cannot allow a US-Russian rapprochement and need to create fissures at all costs.
It is also why they recently ‘leaked’ the audio of his threats to bomb Moscow at an opportune time: they’re doing everything in their power to stir the pot and fan the flames of the narrative of confrontation to browbeat Trump into escalation against Moscow.
The big question is, does Trump have the backbone to stay the course?
—
Lastly:
Ukraine reports Russia has accumulated a record number of missiles—2,000 total:
Even as we speak, another major strike on Ukraine reportedly featuring hundreds of drones and a few dozen missiles is ongoing—all unopposed, as usual:
How are those Patriots coming along?