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The Russians have an obvious motivation to hide how many soldiers are dying. That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like something else that was nonsens

by Veen 4y ago

The Russians have an obvious motivation to hide how many soldiers are dying. That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like something else that was nonsense" isn't a very strong refutation.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
> That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like something else that was nonsense" isn't a very strong refutation. It's improbable for the same reasons it was improbable the last time it wasn't true. Secret mass cremations just aren't practical from a logistical standpoint.
- varjag 4y ago
  Mobile military crematories do exist in Russian military, there are public pre-war videos of them. Apparently the command seen enough need for them to manufacture the hardware. With a prior like that, it's entirely probable.
  - paisawalla 4y ago
    Anyone who has had a relative cremated knows that it takes 2+ hours for the body to be fully reduced to ashes and bone fragments. Two hours, for a single body, in a facility the size of a large garage. Just do some napkin math for what that means for the prospect of cremating a single body in something the size of a cement mixer. Running non-stop with no breaks, bodies ready to go, matching the efficiency of the most optimal stationary crematories, working around the clock, a single truck could burn 12 bodies using 336 gallons of fuel (per https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-cremate-a-body/ https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-crem...) and generating 6.6 metric tons of CO2. For this to even make sense politically, there would have to be a number of bodies so large that burning it made more sense than anything else, even with how costly and obvious it would be to observers. I'm open to your guesses, but I'm going to say one thousand innocents in a single place would be sufficiently atrocious. I say this because numbers like 100-200 are thrown around fairly casually when reporting on Ukraine and other locations, so I'm going up one magnitude from that. So 84 trucks working as described could finish this job in one day, releasing 5,500 metric tons of CO2 and consuming 2300+ gallons of fuel to do so. I leave it to the reader to determine whether it's plausible for a military in the midst of a very difficult war to dedicate the human and supply resources necessary to conduct such an operation (at peak efficiency, as described). At the very least, the movement and fueling of 84 such trucks (or even 30 if we're spending a week doing this) should be observable. We shouldn't have to rely on video from 2013 to make these claims. The video most often shown as proof of Russia's mobile crematories is one of a mobile incinerator, e.g. for trash which can fully combust in minutes.
    - varjag 4y ago
      The manufacturer's YouTube videos describe that as crematorium, not incinerator. Also not sure if you have a command of Russian, but the video with burning the trash still has the narrator explaining its use for cremation of 'biological waste'. They obviously didn't want showing said waste in demonstration video. Regarding the waste of resources, these are likely to use lower grade/bunker fuel. And as to priorities, remember Russia is the only country in the world that introduced a national standard for mass graves. In effect since February 1st this year: https://www.mchs.gov.ru/dokumenty/5693 https://www.mchs.gov.ru/dokumenty/5693 Scroll down to page 13 for pictures if you don't read Russian.
      - paisawalla 4y ago
        Can you link to these videos? I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove. AFAIK Russia is probably the only military of its size engaged in operations that would result in mass field casualties of soldiers, what should they do?
        varjag 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hFnpyO8aY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hFnpyO8aY > I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove. That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they pay substantial attention to.
        paisawalla 4y ago
        The video shows them putting in trash, and that it fits about a pallet of cardboard. It also says it gets to 1200 degrees, much less than the 1800-2000 degrees required to incinerate a human. > That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they pay substantial attention to. Yes, because again, they are probably the only military in the world engaged in conventional, symmetrical combat at their scale. Advanced nations like the US will just drop a bomb on a peasant wedding in Baluchistan and let the locals do the clean up. It's much more efficient, and as a bonus, provides a great boost to the local funerary economy as well.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > It's improbable for the same reasons it was improbable the last time it wasn't true. Secret mass cremations just aren't practical from a logistical standpoint. Your personal assertion doesn't really hold any water. Mobile crematoriums, or hiding evidence of crimes in general, are not used because they are practical. They are used because it's a possible solution for a pressing problem. And the "mass" blurb is a misrepresentation of their mission. The purpose of mass crematoriums is not to hide the mass of battlefield casualties, but relative low volume of politically damaging killings, such as quietly disappearing civil and military leadership without trace in a post-invasion/occupation scenario. In the case of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, it just so happened that the planned 3-day war followed by occupation never materialized, and somehow that is evidence that Russia's usage of mobile crematoriums is improbable?
lostlogin 4y ago
The accusation isn’t that the Russians are hiding their dead, it’s that they are covering up their treatment of civilians. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/russia-accused-mobile-crematoriums-incinerate-civilians-mariupol/story?id=83932376 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/russia-accused-mobi...

by Veen 4y ago

The Russians have an obvious motivation to hide how many soldiers are dying. That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like something else that was nonsense" isn't a very strong refutation.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

> That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like something else that was nonsense" isn't a very strong refutation. It's improbable for the same reasons it was improbable the last time it wasn't true. Secret mass cremations just aren't practical from a logistical standpoint.

varjag 4y ago
Mobile military crematories do exist in Russian military, there are public pre-war videos of them. Apparently the command seen enough need for them to manufacture the hardware. With a prior like that, it's entirely probable.
- paisawalla 4y ago
  Anyone who has had a relative cremated knows that it takes 2+ hours for the body to be fully reduced to ashes and bone fragments. Two hours, for a single body, in a facility the size of a large garage. Just do some napkin math for what that means for the prospect of cremating a single body in something the size of a cement mixer. Running non-stop with no breaks, bodies ready to go, matching the efficiency of the most optimal stationary crematories, working around the clock, a single truck could burn 12 bodies using 336 gallons of fuel (per https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-cremate-a-body/ https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-crem...) and generating 6.6 metric tons of CO2. For this to even make sense politically, there would have to be a number of bodies so large that burning it made more sense than anything else, even with how costly and obvious it would be to observers. I'm open to your guesses, but I'm going to say one thousand innocents in a single place would be sufficiently atrocious. I say this because numbers like 100-200 are thrown around fairly casually when reporting on Ukraine and other locations, so I'm going up one magnitude from that. So 84 trucks working as described could finish this job in one day, releasing 5,500 metric tons of CO2 and consuming 2300+ gallons of fuel to do so. I leave it to the reader to determine whether it's plausible for a military in the midst of a very difficult war to dedicate the human and supply resources necessary to conduct such an operation (at peak efficiency, as described). At the very least, the movement and fueling of 84 such trucks (or even 30 if we're spending a week doing this) should be observable. We shouldn't have to rely on video from 2013 to make these claims. The video most often shown as proof of Russia's mobile crematories is one of a mobile incinerator, e.g. for trash which can fully combust in minutes.
  - varjag 4y ago
    The manufacturer's YouTube videos describe that as crematorium, not incinerator. Also not sure if you have a command of Russian, but the video with burning the trash still has the narrator explaining its use for cremation of 'biological waste'. They obviously didn't want showing said waste in demonstration video. Regarding the waste of resources, these are likely to use lower grade/bunker fuel. And as to priorities, remember Russia is the only country in the world that introduced a national standard for mass graves. In effect since February 1st this year: https://www.mchs.gov.ru/dokumenty/5693 https://www.mchs.gov.ru/dokumenty/5693 Scroll down to page 13 for pictures if you don't read Russian.
    - paisawalla 4y ago
      Can you link to these videos? I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove. AFAIK Russia is probably the only military of its size engaged in operations that would result in mass field casualties of soldiers, what should they do?
      - varjag 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hFnpyO8aY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hFnpyO8aY > I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove. That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they pay substantial attention to.
        paisawalla 4y ago
        The video shows them putting in trash, and that it fits about a pallet of cardboard. It also says it gets to 1200 degrees, much less than the 1800-2000 degrees required to incinerate a human. > That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they pay substantial attention to. Yes, because again, they are probably the only military in the world engaged in conventional, symmetrical combat at their scale. Advanced nations like the US will just drop a bomb on a peasant wedding in Baluchistan and let the locals do the clean up. It's much more efficient, and as a bonus, provides a great boost to the local funerary economy as well.
arinlen 4y ago
> It's improbable for the same reasons it was improbable the last time it wasn't true. Secret mass cremations just aren't practical from a logistical standpoint. Your personal assertion doesn't really hold any water. Mobile crematoriums, or hiding evidence of crimes in general, are not used because they are practical. They are used because it's a possible solution for a pressing problem. And the "mass" blurb is a misrepresentation of their mission. The purpose of mass crematoriums is not to hide the mass of battlefield casualties, but relative low volume of politically damaging killings, such as quietly disappearing civil and military leadership without trace in a post-invasion/occupation scenario. In the case of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, it just so happened that the planned 3-day war followed by occupation never materialized, and somehow that is evidence that Russia's usage of mobile crematoriums is improbable?

lostlogin 4y ago

The accusation isn’t that the Russians are hiding their dead, it’s that they are covering up their treatment of civilians. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/russia-accused-mobile-crematoriums-incinerate-civilians-mariupol/story?id=83932376 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/russia-accused-mobi...