Just so we're using the same definition, a casualty is anyone removed from the battle to death or injury, so when I am saying casualty, that is not a synonym for dead. Some folks don't realize that. I had to search for a while last night to get the info I was trying to find, but it's much harder to hard data from "reputable" news sites. I can post stuff from Al-Jazeera or other individual reporters who are following this stuff more closely, but you like to get your news from corporate press, so it's going to be hard for you to accept anything that doesn't sound like it was a written by an American millennial that thinks war is just a first-person shooter.

However, if you're willing to dig, you can find the occasional honest piece of journalism about the reality of this war. This is from WaPo about the beginning of the counteroffensive.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/202...mmunition/

While that does a good job of showing the suffering, it's still really hard to nail down the numbers of this war. Both sides aren't being honest. The Russian Commanders are estimating 12k casualties for the counteroffensive alone. Ukraine isn't giving its numbers at all, which makes me think it was substantial.
However, keep in mind that Ukraine literally used untrained fighters as front-line units to build up their presence in the southeast region. It was this diversion that caused Russia to withdraw troops from the North to reinforce its southern flank, which allowed the counteroffensive to succeed. It was a good plan to recapture some of the territory in the north, but it came at a GREAT COST, and the article I posted above echoes that sentiment. Russia basically just withdrew their troops once they realized they had been tricked while bombing the hell out of the bulk of the Ukranian forces in the south. This isn't an uncommon strategy for them.

Personally, I don't believe this counteroffensive works without serious planning intervention by NATO. We are playing a dangerous game. I just don't understand why everyone jumps at the first sign of positive news like everything has changed. We're all being lied to constantly right now. As to the total casualties, two officials from Ukraine said they are losing 1000 people a day since the war began, according to the Guardian. Even using their estimates conservatively, you're at 180k casualties since this war started.

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