Atheist Forum

Putin holds 45-minute "victory" parade, half the length of last year's parade

For the first time in years, no armoured vehicles or ballistic missiles featured in Moscow's Victory Day parade.

Addressing the crowd, Putin started his speech by commemorating the sacrifices of Soviet soldiers during World War Two.

"The great feat of the generation of victors inspires the soldiers carrying out the goals of the special military operation today," he said, referring to the war in Ukraine which has been going on for more than four years.

A guy with multiple palaces and a swimming pool of money speaks of sacrifice.

"They are confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the whole bloc of Nato.

Weird how it's not NATO invading its neighbors.

But let's say for a minute that's true, and all of NATO is spoiling for a military confrontation with Russia. All Putin would have to do to foil this dastardly plot is to not march his troops into Ukraine - into death. If Putin willingly sends his people into a NATO trap, who is at fault? Putin would be working alongside NATO to ensure enormous Russian losses, hypothetically of course.

If Putin had half a brain, instead of invading Ukraine, he could have aligned himself completely with the Trump crime family. Untold riches and all sorts of down-low deals were just waiting for him.

I saw another terrified African mercenary get droned. You would think the word is out by now, but the $2,300 a month salary promise is just too rich, I guess. How useful can these guys be when they don't speak the language? Just dress them up, hand them a gun and point to where they need to go.

Yeah, it happens. Iirc, Russia is no longer getting the same amount of recruits internationally as they did in 2023 and 2024, but apparently, there's still some interest, despite the near certain death. It's really sad.

There's also footage of 5 Russian troops - a whole squad - getting turned into mincemeat by a single Ukrainian drone. Ukrainian drone pilots are no joke. They absolutely can and will hit targets dead center with dropped mortar rounds. No medic in the world can treat that. It's way better to surrender. In addition to being alive and healthy and no longer in fear or under a cruel commander, Russian POWs can sometimes get McDonald's. I know that's not amazing for us lucky enough to be spoiled for choice, but it's amazing for someone who's been living underground for a couple of months.

For the first time this year, independent Russian media outlets Mediazona and Meduza on May 9 updated their overall estimate of Russia's military losses in Ukraine. According to their report, 352,000 Russian men between the ages of 18 and 59 have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-ind ... an-losses/

If you apply the standard 3:1 wounded/dead ratio you have over a million casualties.

Cassia wrote: Sun May 10, 2026 3:34 pm For the first time this year, independent Russian media outlets Mediazona and Meduza on May 9 updated their overall estimate of Russia's military losses in Ukraine. According to their report, 352,000 Russian men between the ages of 18 and 59 have been killed since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-ind ... an-losses/

If you apply the standard 3:1 wounded/dead ratio you have over a million casualties.

I've seen a lot of war analysts cite the the 3:1 ratio. And they often have the figures to bear it out. But that ratio hasn't held for the entirety of this war or at all fronts - when Russia started their "meat assault" infiltration tactics, they started having more dead than wounded.

Zelenskyy himself commented on this, saying that out of the 1.315 million Russian casualties - 62% are dead, while the remaining 38% are wounded. That's a HUGE number of dead - roughly 815k, far more than I suspected. We should be skeptical of taking any politician's figures at face value, but even so, imho, the normal 300k to 500k estimates are probably too conservative.

Lots of Russian MIA or non-combat-related deaths (death by hazing, murder, overdose, exposure, suicide, etc) are probably not recorded and not every Russian soldier gets a funeral, so relying on visible deaths (drone footage) or Russian funeral services or court-related paperwork are probably undercounting by quite a bit. I've seen Wagner graveyards get bulldozed for more space for even more bodies, which certainly paints a picture of rapidly growing casualties.

Also, it seems intuitive that Putin's decision to break up squads into smaller "infiltration" groups means that whenever a Russian soldier gets wounded, they don't have nearly the same level of care. If your team is an 8-man squad, and you get wounded, you may have a reasonable expectation of medical care or at least hauling you back to base. If your team is you and Sergeant Schultz, your chances of any sort of medical care drop precipitously. Add into that equation that the Ukrainians have greatly expanded the "kill zone" (no-man's land where drones regularly spot and strike infantry), it makes sense that wounded aren't going to able to be evacuated nearly as successfully as before.

I'll have to wait until the end of the war to be able to give the ultimate tally, but I suspect that the normal casualty estimates are significantly less than the actual count.

I would have to agree that Russia is much worse than Western militaries when it comes to saving their wounded. I would not be surprised when accounting for missing soldiers if the number is presently north of half a million dead. Even the most conservative estimates are devastating.

It's amazing how much the war has flipped. (If you want a truly frightening video, watch the one from 2022 before the Moskva sank. It's like night and day)

I remember a couple of years ago and I was hyped about Ukraine improving its drones and causing attrition, regularly warning that these sorts of equipment and manpower losses were unsustainable for Russia. That if Ukraine keeps this up, within a few years, Russia's military is going to start sputtering. But the 24/7 news cycle had Russia advancing in this or that axis, taking various towns and I've gotta say, I looked a bit silly in staking out an overly optimistic stance.

But here we are. Russian naval power and tanks are almost completely gone (an idea that 2022 me would've thought crazy), Russian AA is faltering in combating Ukrainian medium/long-range drone strikes (Ukraine launching more drone strikes on Russia than the other way around - with Russia suffering volcano-like devastation), Russia no longer takes much territory, 9 out of 10 Russian infantry become casualties on the way to engaging the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians regain ground to a small extent, etc.

Yes, there are still difficulties. Ukraine has losses, Ukraine is still bombarded, and sometimes Ukraine loses this or that settlement. But earlier, it was a foregone conclusion that Russia would take Kupiansk and retake Lyman - hell, they'd likely take all of the Donbas and the "fortress belt" cities. This has not been the case. Over the years, Russia has had increasing difficulty in capturing settlements - to the point now that the settlements hang on for months with Russia either barely able to take it like Pokrovsk or the invaders falter and get pushed out by the Ukrainians like Kupiansk. In either case, the Russians take enormous casualties and their offensive operations are ground to a halt.

If this trend continues, Russia will no longer be able to take anything significant. And if it continues much longer, Russia will no longer be able to hold what they have taken - they'd have to send significant reinforcements just to maintain troops levels. And at that point, they've pretty much lost the war already, it's just a matter of when.

Russia unveils its latest and greatest:



It looks like a chicken coop. Plus, those sorts of setups don't work all that well. While it's true that the drone can't come into direct contact with the car, explosions aren't exactly stopped by chain-link fencing.

I'm pretty sure they use shrapnel anti-personnel bombs against those sorts of lightly armored vehicles, anyway. All Ukraine has to do is hit it anywhere and shrapnel is going right through the windows and engine block. But knowing the Ukrainians, they'd probably be able to fly a drone right into the gap at the side door.

And good luck driving that low-rider on uneven terrain. One good bump and that cage is making contact with the ground.

Ukraine demolished an office building used by Russian drone operators on the other side of the river from Kherson city. The reconnaissance footage clearly shows soldiers in the building, and given its location, a drone base is a safe bet. The Russians were likely using it to control drones on "human safari" in Kherson, attacking civilians for no real purpose other than to sow terror and depopulate Ukrainian cities near the frontlines. Well, connection terminated.