Thread by @ArmchairW

Good hit, target burning.

I've always said, only half joking, that Oryx is everything Ukrainian that can be passed off as Russian and everything Russian photographed five times.

Now that so much of the AFU is Western-equipped, I suspect their sources are drying up.

I've been a critic of Oryx for a long time. In fact, what put me on the map as a commentator was an audit of their work that I put together in March 2022. Even as bare-bones as it was it still seems to be the standard debunk, which is amazing to me.

https://twitter.com/ArmchairW/status/1510054419299065859?s=20

The fundamental issue Oryx has always had is their data doesn't cohere with other sources. Lost Armour - using better methodology - has a far lower count.

It also doesn't make sense the Russians have "only" taken some 25k KIA but lost 10k+ vehicles.

See en.zona.media/article/2022/0…

But Oryx's data "looks" good and as such is irresistible to pro-Ukrainian commentators and even senior decisionmakers. This has made otherwise-intelligent people think the Russian Army is on its last legs thanks to massive equipment losses for well over a year now.

As has become blindingly obvious lately, the Russian Army is by no means on its last legs and in fact seems to be present on the ground in greater force than ever.

This is very difficult to square with them losing their entire initial invasion force twice over.

Addendum: To bolster a point I made above using Mediazona, it's also impossible to square the 610 Russian tankers confirmed KIA with Oryx's figure of 2000+ lost Russian tanks, of which almost 1300 were allegedly catastrophic, burned-out kills.