The Kremlin Can’t Hide Its Ukraine War Dead: Reports Emerge Of Funerals Across Russia | Talking Points Memo

On a dusty road near Mongolia on Sunday, hundreds of Russians turned out to bury Ilya Buldin.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1407886

There have been many reports that, rather than repatriating the dead soldiers, they are simply burning the bodies.

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None of this ever should have happened, of course. But I’m far more sympathetic to the soldiers and civilians whose nation is being invaded by a foreign dictator. So, sorry their mothers lost their sons, but not that sorry.

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demanded to know what it was, exactly, that he died for

It’s an old question. Thousands of years old, I think. People like autocracy, they like someone to run the place and keep the “others” in line, but the fun stops when it gets personal and your son/brother/dad shows up in a bag.

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My question is how many have been wounded.

Or to put another way, it is much harder and much more expensive to hide and care for the wounded then it is to bury bodies.

Normally, an army has 4 to 5 times as many wounded as it does killed in action. Furthermore, unlike the dead, the wounded return to tell what is happening.

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Geez…such young kids chewed up by needless war. When will we, as a people, learn from this?

(asked and answered…never!)

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It is nothing that I can celebrate. I hope something good can come of their deaths.

I certainly feel worse for every Ukrainian killed, injured, driven from their home, etc., but my capacity for sympathy is not so limited.

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I am sorry for those who, through no fault of their own, had to–and are having to–suffer for a Dream of Conquest.

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Can’t hide it’s Ukraine war dead…
image

(If you were expecting something sentimental, think again)

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Putin and his gang at the top have spent so much of their time manipulating the mass media through the framing of false narratives that they have deluded themselves into believing this is how you actually pile up success in fighting a ground war.

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I wonder if that ratio will change in this war. I haven’t heard about many small arms firefights. An RPG or Javelin attack on an armored vehicle might not leave survivors. Downing a helicopter with a Stinger doesn’t leave much to pick up afterwards either. It will be different if and when it moves to the door-to-door urban combat phase to take Kyiv.

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Why did the image on this story change from the three Z-emblazoned derelict Russian infantry vehicles to a stock-ish image of Putin?

Did I dream that?

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i remember when my brothers came back from WW2…I will always remember them saying…we were shooting at kids’. i have since had 3 sons of my own…they just missed VIETNAM… but i do remember 18-19 yr.old boys being drafted…and it always for an older man’s wet dream…when have women ever started a war???

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The Stalinist playbook of maximally perverse propaganda is powerfully alive in Russia. It works very well. How is it so tenacious?

Republicans over here are just pikers compared with the Russians.

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How many thug police does Putin have supporting him in Moscow? And what does the Z stand for, zombie? Because unless you like eating the dead there’s nothing good that’s going to happen for those idiots in Russia supporting this. I keep wondering how many in the missile launch chain of command are on board with Putin, in between wondering how easy it will be for a submarine commander in the Atlantic to get confused and think it’s armageddon-o’clock.

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Maybe there’s so many they’re having trouble keeping count?

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War is useful to those who create them. We haven’t figured out how to make it not useful. Never will.

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It’s a letter in the Russian alphabet.

Za pobedu, or “For victory,”

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Many of these are conscripts, consider your son calling to say he’s doing exercises the next day and those “exercises” kill him. These poor schmucks are poorly trained and most probably have little idea where they are or what their doing. Putin don’t give a shit; they are his pawns to use any way he wants.

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The Russians did it.

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