Atheist Forum

Commander of Ukraine’s 2nd Khartiia Corps, Col. Ihor Oboliensky, survived an assassination attempt Friday, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Cherezov was attacked in the entrance of his apartment building, where an assailant fired three shots before fleeing the scene. The attacker remains at large. Cherezov was hospitalized in serious condition, according to Mash.

Hydra009 wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2026 4:44 pm Zelenskyy gives count of total casualties on both sides:

According to Zelenskyy, Ukraine's losses in the war: around 50,000 killed and 400,000 wounded (as well as a "huge number of missing')
Russia has suffered 1,600,000 total losses, including around 700,000 deaths (presumably 900,000 wounded)

This is a bit of an odd statement because his figure for Ukrainian KIA back in February of this year was 55,000. Now it's 50,000. So one or both of these figures is definitely wrong.

Estimates I've seen give Ukraine with anywhere between 100k and 200k KIA. And yes, there are lots of missing - almost 98k. So there's the reason for the significant range for KIA figures. And it means that Zelenskyy's figure is almost certainly an undercount.

The wounded figure is somewhat plausible, but again, it's also likely an undercount. Probably closer to 500k-600k following the standard 3:1 wounded/killed ratio. That ratio might be even higher than that (more wounded but less deaths) because Ukraine has had remarkable success evacuating the wounded and keeping them alive, at least prior to the "drone kill zone" tactics used by both sides, which makes evacuating anyone from the front lines extremely risky. Even then, Ukraine is using ground drones to evacuate the wounded while the Russians are on camera hauling theirs away on a wheelbarrow or just keeping them at their post. There are definitely different tactics being deployed with a very guessable difference in outcomes.

The Russian casualties are much more in keeping with what's already been reported. 1.6 million total casualties - that's a big ol' check. Back in March of this year, Zelenskyy said that 62% of all Russian casualties were KIA. This seems unbelievably high, especially compared to Ukraine's ratio and even the historical ratio of 3:1.

But the attacker typically has more difficulty evacuating the wounded and Russia's extremely wasteful tactics of massed armored assaults, meat wave assaults, tunnel tactics, and infiltration tactics have not worked out so well. Earlier in the war, they put a lot more effort into evacuating the wounded. Now, not so much. It's generally assumed that it's a one-way ticket and Russian units generally don't put a lot of effort into preserving their troops. There are also plenty of non-combat deaths from disease, weather, food/water deprivation, and murder. Commanders killing their own troops, troops killing their commanders, troops killing other troops.

So the KIA probably isn't quite 62% - because that'd be almost a million, not the 700k Zelenskyy is now claiming. But the general ballpark of 700k is very plausible as is the derived 900k wounded figure. Russia has and continues to have a much, much larger casualty count than Ukraine, and Ukraine's middle-range strike offensive and overall reliance on drones is just adding to it. The more Russians encounter Ukrainian drones, the less they encounter actual Ukrainians.

Hydra009 wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2026 3:14 am Russian beachgoers flee in panic as Russian air defense shoots down Ukrainian drone over crowded beach, at least 7 Russian civilians killed

I saw the footage on telegram and it's 100% the result of Russian air defense choosing to engage at the wrong time and place. The Russians have very frequently had very poor trigger-discipline and wild-spray-n-pray tactics. Add to that that they're often deployed right next to civilians and it's no surprise that undisciplined and reckless behavior leads to poor results.

Previously, they've fired AA missiles and hit Russian apartments. They even had a weird incident where the AA boomeranged back at the launcher, which was really bizarre. They've had lots of small arms firing in the vague direction of Ukrainian drones and hitting god knows what (what goes up, must come down). They've had a pantsir bizarrely shoot parallel to the ground, hurling 30mm shells through buildings, narrowly missing a guy. In the big Moscow attack, they had a guy firing a machine gun while standing in the road in weird loose-cannon arcs dangerously close to nearby vehicles (a couple of degrees difference, and one of those vehicles would have a sunroof). And famously, they also had air defense miss a Ukrainian drone and hit a fuel storage tank, blowing its top

So I'm not surprised that Russian air defense killed someone, albeit indirectly.

Naturally, the Russians simultaneously said that it was an attack by the Ukrainians on beachgoers and that it was just drone debris. Well, who created the drone debris, hmm?

What I am surprised by is western media taking Russian claims at face value and reporting them as if they were facts. "Ukrainian drone strikes Russian beach resort". Yes, but why? Omitting the "because it got shot down" part is very misleading, possibly deliberately so. It makes it appear like the Ukrainians were targeting civilians on purpose, which is definitely not their mo. Morality aside, that wouldn't be a practical strategy. The Ukrainians don't have enough drones to waste them so frivolously. Russia is a big place with lots of much, much higher-value targets - refineries, radar, air defense, command posts, logistics, warehouses, war factories, etc. You can't pass up all those juicy targets just to waste it on a beach. Ukraine is trying to win a war and you don't win wars by bombing beaches deliberately.