10 November: 240,000 casualties is too heavy a price

UKRAINE WAR TRUTH 253: 240,000 casualties is too heavy a price

War losses 4: To quote an unreliable source – because there aren't any reliable ones – U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general Mark Milley estimates that “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in the war”, and the “same thing probably on the Ukrainian side.” Plus 40,000 Ukrainian civilians killed, makes a gross total of 240,000 war casualties. Once again, these figures are highly unreliable. Nothing that comes out of the CIA or the Pentagon – nor out of the Kremlin – is to be believed. But what should be crystal clear is that the toll of the war is horrible, and the figures are still adding up.

Since both sides are seemingly suffering an equal number of casualties, wouldn't it be in the interests of both to stop the carnage and try to solve the problem by other means than bullets, bombs and missiles?

Some will say that Russia is a “terrorist state” with whom one should not negotiate. They tend to forget that their own puppet master and major ally, the U.S., is even a worse terrorist state than Russia, but they don't hesitate to carry out its orders and sabotage the possibility of peace between Russia and Ukraine.

Secondly, continuing the war may in the end result in the Russian invaders being expelled from Ukraine – which certainly is a desirable objective. But this may take several years and hundreds of thousands more casualties. Whatever the U.S. thinks it is doing, it won't defeat Russia on the battlefield – unless it's a nuclear battlefield in which case it will itself perish, along with the rest of the world. Russia might disintegrate – like the Soviet Union did before – or the Putin regime might crash under its own gravity. External factors may contribute to that outcome, but the fundamental cause will be internal. How can anyone justify the further slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians – even if one doesn't care about the hundreds of thousands of Russians?

The price of the Ukraine-Russia war so far has been too high. The slaughter should stop. In a rare and fleeting moment of lucidity even general Milley had to admit that early refusal to negotiate in the first world war led to millions more casualties. “So when there is an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved: seize the moment.” As even Pentagon warmongers are calling for negotiations, some armchair “heroes” continue to reject them. They should be sent to the battlefield. Perhaps a rain shower of bombs might change their minds.