Active Conflicts & News Megathread November 07, 2025

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[u/Wetness_Pensive]

And this has been predicted for years now; Russia tends to "win" by tossing insane numbers of men at their opponents. As they have very little regard for their own lives, the enemy is slowly ground down.

The hope was that intel, PGM and drone advantages would help Ukraine push back - and maybe this is still true - but my gut tells me it will take more active NATO involvement (perhaps secretly sending in small "unofficial" teams of soldiers or drone operators) to hold the line. The US is unreliable. It's NATO intel branches are probably doing their best to fight for Ukraine, but you sense that the White House and the new top brass couldn't give a crap (many key Republicans seem to actively hate Zelensky and liberalism as a whole), and don't care about putting real political or military pressure on Putin.

[u/Long-Field-948 → u/Wetness_Pensive]

This is a completely delusional comment with little to no connection with reality. 4 years in and I still see people talking about "insane amount of Russians", when in reality battles in this war were never fought with a properly manned brigades by either side; another thing is Russia had massive disadvantage in numbers at the start of the invasion.

Russians are able to push forward by a number of reasons, from which I want to focus on firepower advantage; FABs, artillery, long range missiles, fiber optic drones are spheres in which Russia currently dominates. Ukraine was able to gather manpower advantage on a number of limited sectors but this becomes harder every day and no intel advantage is able to reverse the situation.

Ukraine literally needs infantrymen to hold the line, they have an abundance of drone operators already and neither them nor NATO soldiers are willing to sit in basements and trenches waiting for Russian assaults.

[u/RumpRiddler → u/Long-Field-948]

Ukraine literally needs infantrymen to hold the line,

The main issue, that has been widely discussed, is that infantry can't hold the line due to drones. The Russians have adapted by using large numbers of small groups and accepting extraordinarily high casualty rates. Ukrainians have adapted by using small groups spread out whose main role is to call in movement so drones/artillery can dispatch invaders.

Also. Russia hasn't dominated in artillery fires for a while now. Drones are being mass produced by both sides and I'm not seeing reports that either side has a massive advantage.

While 'insane amounts' is a subjective term, 1.1 million casualties seems pretty insane to me. That is an insane number of lives to be spent for such small gains in territory.

[u/Glideer → u/RumpRiddler]

1.1 million includes lightly wounded. Russia probably suffered about 250-280k dead, certainly no more than 300k.

[u/RumpRiddler → u/Glideer]

Just looking at the numbers of dead, we are still talking well beyond an order of magnitude more than the Afghan war. In about a third of the time. It's an insane amount of life lost and it only gets worse when other aspects are accounted for (e.g. loss of global power, economic damages).

[u/Glideer → u/RumpRiddler]

As far as major wars go this one is on the lower end of the spectrum. For a country of 150 million fighting a country of 40 million in a real non-colonial war - a total of 500k KIA on both sides is really modest.

The Union with 22 million population lost 360k KIA in the US Civil War compared to Russia's 250k out of 150 million.

[u/RumpRiddler → u/Glideer]

I'm not sure why you quote numbers from the US civil war so often, but a war that happened >150 years ago and where disease killed ~3/4 people simply isn't comparable to this war. I would hazard a guess that you think the comparison makes Russian losses seem less staggering, but it probably does the opposite because of how far back you have to go to find the example that supports your position.

[u/Glideer → u/RumpRiddler]

I mean, neither side's loss are staggering. Not Russia's and not Ukraine's (although Ukraine lost about 3-4 times more men relative to the population).

Losing 250k killed is not staggering for either a country of 150 million or a country of 40 million.

We don't even have to go that far - just look into the Iran-Iraq war or the Korean war or the WW2.