The dairy company Arla would be in trouble if they had to do this :D

Arla Finland has one of the few most prominent nazis in Finland in their board of directors. There was a bit of a scandal because of this about a year or two ago, but Arla's Finnish daughter company said "we already know, but he has promised not to be a nazi during working hours, and it's every employee's personal choice what they do in their free time." And Finland was okay with that (!!)

Guess if I have bought their products even once after that? 🙃

Half Life 4: Episode 3.

Anybody in Crimea knows that if you say Crimea is Ukraine, you will quite soon get beaten up seriously badly. A person cannot know whether you will rat him out or not, so It does not matter what he thinks – he will absolutely say that he supports the Russia. Practically everybody in Crimea will say that they do, no matter what they think.

A lot of Crimeans DID do the same. Why do you assume they didn't?

I don't think he can have. He knows Ukraine has been losing ground in Kursk. But he also understands that this is not really relevant at this point. The Russia has not been advancing in any noticeable manner since early 2022. (Okay, in 2024 they did gain 0.7 % percent of Ukraine's total territory in just one year, but I would not call gaining under one percent of a country's territory advancing, really)

It would be useful for Ukraine to remain in the Kursk area, but what can you do when all your warehouses' and military bases' locations in the area are suddenly known by your enemy? It's a huge task building new ones in different places, and one cannot do so in just a couple of days.

I don't think a refinery strike in the Russia has any effect on Hungary. Except by weakening Hungary's ally.

This strike has no effect on availability of crude oil in the Russia or elsewhere, but it does have an effect on availability of refined oil products within a certain, rather large, radius around the refinery.

Same in Finland: a Californian or a Hawaiian is a Yankee (in Finnish: jenkki) here.

I don't think it matters whether after those hours of travelling and queuing you need to press buttons on a touch screen or scribble two or three numbers on a piece of paper.

Neither case makes the drive any shorter.

Ukraine publishes daily statistics about Russia's manpower losses. One would think those numbers are simply propaganda and any army would "of course" exaggerate such numbers.

But, firstly: The numbers reported by Ukraine rise and fall hand-in-hand with the numbers given by Oryx. There is something of an almost fixed multiplier between Oryx numbers and official data provided by Ukraine. And the Oryx numbers are always published later than Ukraine publishes its own, so Ukraine cannot be just copying Oryx's numbers and multiplying them. And it's logical that Oryx shows only a fraction of the real number, because for most Russian combat losses there is no photo proof, and Oryx only counts what has photo proof.

So, at least the Ukrainian numbers rise and drop without fake data added. Then the question is whether the scale of the numbers is correct, or if Ukraine intentionally inflates them with some static multiplier. Since there is data about the Russia's recruitment capacity and the whole size of the Russia's army, it's visible that by recruiting about 1000 per day they can keep their army's size constant. That shows that the losses must be around the same ballpark. And it coincides with the numbers published by Ukraine.

But yes, now that Russians mostly do not have tanks to use in their attacks, they are really using pure meat wave attacks, and that costs a LOT of men. There's a reason Putin is trying to convince Trump to force Ukraine into an armistice. Losing that many soldiers – indeed almost half a million per year! – is extremely unsustainable, no matter what image Putin is trying to give.

And remember: these numbers are about irrecoverable losses, of which only a fraction are deaths. The number of deaths is far lower.

If their losses climb back to 1800 per day, meaning 700-ish dead per day, and their population is about 140 000 000, that makes a nice round number of 200 000 days. Or 547 years. However, because the Russia's population was already decreasing fast for other reasons anyway, the real number is more like 100-ish years.

BTW, Ukraine has lost on average 64 soldiers per day as dead during these three years. Counting with 40 000 000 inhabitants, that means the last Ukrainian will die on the front in 625 000 days from now. Or 1712 years.

Reading these numbers, keep in mind that they are about dead soldiers, not about losses in manpower. Most of manpower losses come in the form of severe inrecoverable wounds. For Ukraine it's 1:4 or 1:5, so per one dead you have four to five crippled, and for the Russia it's 1:2,5. The Russia has less wounded because so many of their wounded become dead some hours after being wounded. So, the manpower losses are higher in Ukraine, but most of the lost Ukrainian soldiers return to their families, while a huge share of the lost Russian soldiers turn into soil.

Heroiam slava

Heroiam slava!