From a social science point of view, it's research work.
It is just not.......As I said, this is at most a probe
Research is when you have empirical evidence to support something, this is nothing but a stab in the dark.......If this is science, then this is quack science.....
There are probably media outside the internet where such messages are published, in which case they'd have been taken into account. Moreover this was one out of several sets of data considered. Chances are that for the bulk of Russian forces fallen in the conflict, there's going to be some accessiblev indication among the multiple sets of empirical sources investigated by those BBC journalists.
Again, there are many other ways or reason why no one was contacted or no condolence message was sent, even if they can crawl thru ALL OSINT, there are still private data that is not going to be available to the "BBC Researcher"
And again, you are not talking about a proportional casualty, as in how many of those are being notified or griefed, there are still many other factor that was not involved and therefore not recorded.
If condolence messages were the only thing they looked at, but they weren't.
Just think of it like this, you need a handle to do any online communication, that is the one that you can look up.
Ask yoruself this, how many Russian soldier have online handle to begin with?
Unless these "BBC researcher" have access to the official roll of Russian Military (which I highly doubt they will) the people they know are deceased are only limited to people who are available on open source.
It doesn't matter if that is message, condolence or whatever, they won't have access to the entire database and I don't think the entire Russian Military roll call are being put on the internet so everyone can look up.
Yes, as long as they examined all types of public sources acknowledging troop deaths.
See above response.
Eh... several hundreds of thousands can range from 200.000 to 900.000 or more. Also since we're talking about the sum of casualties, most of these weren't lethal. Still, it would realistically imply a minimum loss of 20.000 units of the Ukrainian military and probably more. This doesn't stem from my imagination but from the words of a Ukrainian general no less.
You are talking about "several hundred thousand" casualty in a "several hundred thousand" Army. In America, your unit is labelled combat ineffective if you have 20% of casualty, the reason behind this is you will need another 20% of men to look after the 20% casualty, which mean your unit is down 40%. Let's say it's 200,000 on a 900,000 force, you are talking about 22% casualty, and there is no way Ukraine would have 900,000 personnel. More likely between 6-700,000
And again, I watched the original interview, it has been taken out of context.
What undermanned units? Total Ukrainian troop numbers have consistently been far superior to the amount of Russian forces mobilized in the operation.
Dude, just because Ukrainian have 6-700,000 troop in Ukraine vs 300,000 Russian, that does not mean they have superior in number, Ukrainian are defending their entire country, which mean they would have to put troop in fronts that are not active, to anticipate an attack.
It's the same as why Russia have 1.3 million troops but they can only spare 300,000 to attack Ukraine.
Also your entire argument here is flawed, since it doesn't seem to occur to you that if, say, you are in a situation where you have fewer units to defend a given location, then you'll be more likely to lose that location and also to do so while sustaining fewer casualties compared to losing that same location with more troops defending it. Various other scenarii are possible in which retreat does not equal high casualties.
What the hell are you talking about??
If you have less troop defending an area, you either buckle or get slaughter, in either case, you will lose all your troop, either killed, wounded or captured, and you will also suffer casualty more proportional to the attacker. Less defender, less attacker casualty, you don't lose the same amount of attacker to say 100 soldiers defending an area to 10,000 soldiers defending the same area.
And I am NOT talking about the number, I am talking about the proportional lost.
If and when you retreated, that mean you lose more people to the attacker in proportional, the number may be smaller, say if I have a force of 100,000 to attack and you have 500, you lose all 500 but I lose 1000 taking your position, yes, I lose more than you in number, but you lose more than me proportional to the attacks. Because you lose your entire unit, I lost 1%
I relayed a statement from a high ranking officer of the Ukrainian military as well as a comprehensive, transparent and methodologically sound piece of in-depth research by investigative journalists of the BBC. Neither of them are partial in favor of Russia.
Again, your video, according to you, are taking what that general said out of context.
And I don't know what value the BBC "research" has......
Now this to me weighs more than some random, unsubstantiated estimates based on thin air and published by either biased or uninvolved outside sources.
And yours are substantiated?? I don't know counting internet post is a method to gather casualty information....
We can all guess, but again, it would not make sense to have 5700 loss in a 6 months war with nil or neglectable progress. Again, that casualty number need to fit the actual circumstance of the war. Either all the loss Russia suffer is bloodless. Or that is not a valid number.....
Or maybe they affected large amounts of researchers to the task. Do you happen to be privy to this in order to draw that conclusion? Nor have you produced evidence that the volume of data they processed is actually small. As for grave sites not representing anything, no comment.
Dude, and you know??
First of all, Russia has 157 million people. If you want to know in entirety, you will have to interview all 157 million people and see if they have lost any one in the war. That's 157 million calls. Let's say a standard conversation is 3 minutes. It will take 471 million minutes of call to make sure everyone was contacted, and I am already discounting people not picking up the phone, or line is busy, let's just say every call was picked up and spend 3 minutes to gather data. 60 minutes an hour, which mean it will take 7.85 million hours to contact them all, which mean it will take around 327,085 days to contact all of them because each day have 24 hours. 300 thousand days. Which mean if you have a team of 1000, they did nothing but keep calling Russian all day, 24/7, it will take them 300 days to interview all the people.
Now, I don't know how big you think BBC is, I would doubt there are 1000 worker work for BBC Russia and I would very much doubt they will do nothing but call people 24/7 for 300 days, which this war is still in day 202.
Unless, again, those BBC dude have access to the entire list of Russian Service Personnel, then they will not need to call Everyone in Russia.
When you focus on an indication, you narrow that scope of the search.
Say if I focus on the estimation of ground force, then that number will not be representing the entirity of Russian Armed Force because you are ignoring the Navy, Air Force and other branch.
You are doing a broad-spectrum search, which mean you cannot use "Indication" as a starting point. Because "Indication" are passive.
