From “Americans and Russians Fought a Battle in Syria — It’s Time to Care,” David French NRO:
If reports of hundreds of Russian dead are correct [in the recent Syrian battle], the American military just killed more Russians than it did in any single encounter throughout the entirety of the Cold War. That’s stunning.
Inter-alia, the author cites the following unverified transcript [reported here] from a Russian mercenary:
The reports that are on TV about … well, you know, about Syria and the 25 people that are wounded there from the Syrian f*** army and — well . . . to make it short, we’ve had our asses f*** kicked. So one squadron f*** lost 200 people … right away, another one lost 10 people . . . and I don’t know about the third squadron, but it got torn up pretty badly, too. . . . So three squadrons took a beating. . . . The Yankees attacked . . . first they blasted the f*** out of us by artillery, and then they took four helicopters up and pushed us in a f*** merry-go-round with heavy caliber machine guns … They were all shelling the holy f*** out of it, and our guys didn’t have anything besides the assault rifles . . . nothing at all, not even mentioning shoulder-fired SAMs or anything like that . . . So they tore us to pieces for sure, put us through hell, and the Yankees knew for sure that the Russians were coming, that it was us, f*** Russians . . . Our guys were going to commandeer an oil refinery, and the Yankees were holding it. . . . We got our f*** asses beat rough, my men called me . . . They’re there drinking now. . . many have gone missing . . . it’s a total f*** up.