I made the mistake of visiting Ian Welsh’s Twitter again. Can’t help myself. His claims that Russia is “winning” don’t match the actual…anything. Like, how war works, the evidence, the views of anyone else or even a casual glance at reality.

Russia has managed to take and barely hold about 20% of Ukraine’s territory and that hasn’t changed much in two years. See for yourself.

What’s odd is that so many people believe Welsh and propagandists like him when you can just go look for yourself. It’s no secret (and impossible to conceal) which areas of Ukraine are under Russian control and which are not. And mostly, the war has been a bloody trading of territory back and forth with some slight Russian advances while Russia experiences a 10 to 1 KIA ratio compared to Ukrainian forces.

That is not in fact “winning.” And I’d say that even if I were a Russia supporter. They are trading about 1,000 to 3,000 dead for every kilometer they gain. That ain’t no form of winning I am aware of. Just by some simple math (and I know war does not work linearly this way), to take all of Ukraine Russia would have to expend about 25% of its entire population as KIAs. Yeah, winning, sure. Wackypants motherfuckers.