#russian soldiers cannon fodder

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

[vamptastic]

one small thing that bugs me about disco elysium is the lack of Fantasy Jews. i mean every setting that creates analogues of real world cultures tends to forget about us (i am generously overlooking when they make us into goblins or some shit). but still, idk, it'd be cool, and for the setting you'd figure we'd factor in a little. idk though, i know a decent amount about the history of jews in american socialism but little about our role in european communism especially outside of the ussr. there were certainly jewish communist movements within the ussr but most of us would've been gone long before the fall of the soviet union ig.

[irithnova]

The Russian state using ethnic minorities as cannon fodder - with a focus on Buryats

Article written in 2022, update on the Free Buryatia Foundation in September 2023 given at the end of the post.

Putin announced on October 14th 2022 that by the end of October, his partial mobilisation process would be complete

The recruitment target was 300,000. 222,000 were recruited, and it was claimed that there'd be no more plans for future recruitment

The mobilisation process soaked nation wide outrage which lead to mass protests.

It drew in criticism from some of the Russian political elite

The mobilisation process disproportionately affected ethnic minorities/impoverished regions (many impoverished regions have a high ethnic minority population)

Tuva Republic

Regions that held high populations of ethnic minorities bared the brunt of war-related deaths.

Both Ukrainian media and authorities have levelled accusations at Russian ethnic minorities - that they committed war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine

This accusations was made in May 2022 by Lydmyla Denisova, Ukrainian ombudsman for human rights

Buryats and Chechens were being accused of this

This was a form of scapegoating (not to say they 0 ethnic minorities have committed war crimes in Ukraine of course)

The Free Buryat Foundation investigated this and produced a report that challenged the notion that Buryats were ever sent to Bucha, let alone being responsible for the war crimes committed

Victoria Maladaeva is the vice president of the Free Buryatia Foundation.

She said:

Dagestan, Tuva Republic and Buryatia Republic have the highest death tolls

Moscow, with 17 million, had >50 deaths.

Buryatia with only 980,000 had 364

A Buryat is 7.8 x more likely to die in the war compared to an ethnic Russian.

A Tuvan is 10.4x more likely

The biggest losses were at the beginning of the war and numbers gradually decreased.

Mobilisation was first and foremost carried out in ethnic republics

The day Putin announced this, authorities came to Buryatia at night, went into people's homes and took them from their beds.

No one was given draft notices

They even took men with multiple children, men from the same family

Endangered ethnic groups reside in Dagestan

There are very small communities of those people with populations of around 13,000

Despite this, those minorities were still drafted

There are also very small communities in the Sakha Republic.

They are so remote, helicopters are needed to be called for medical treatment

They almost never come because of how remote these communities are

Funnily enough, helicopters came immediately to draft those people upon Putin's announcement

Putin is a Russian imperialist through and through

None Russians are treated like second class citizens

Russian cultural chauvinism is seen even in small things - such as names

Putin would frequently mispronounce Kazakhstan's president's name. If you have an ethnic Buryat name for example, Russians are reluctant to use it, instead assigning you an "easier" Russian name

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

Unfortunately, many of the people of Buryatia believe in the Russian narrative about Nazi ideology in Ukraine

It is one of the missions of the free Buryatia Foundation to help Buryats understand that this is Russian propaganda

The focus on Buryat/ethnic minority war crimes has a racial element

When an ethnic minority commits a war crime, their ethnicity is singled out

It should not matter the ethnicity of a war criminal

78 Buryat soldiers from the 11th air assault brigade were barred from terminating their contract

They were imprisoned in Luhansk.

Only Ilya Kaminskiy returned. The fate of the other men is unknown

The Free Buryatia Foundation knows they cannot help everyone but they do their best. They help people in terminating their contracts for example and have been quite successful in this.

The Free Buryatia Foundation was established to counter Russian propaganda and to protest the war.

People worldwide took an interest to this, so they founded the free Buryatia Foundation.

The Free Buryatia Foundation is the first ethnic anti war organisation in Russia

They aided in founding anti war organisations in other ethnic regions such as Tuva, Kalmykia, Udmurtia, Sakha

Many Buryats fled to Mongolia and Kazakhstan

Some men were able to come back after being drafted, some were not

The economic situation for Buryatia is dire. It ranked 81st out of 85 of Russia's regions when it came to living standards

Buryats had to spend money on a list of supplies for war that Russia did not provide them

Very recently, on September 1st, Russia banned the Free Buryatia Foundation, labelling them as undesirable and anti Russian.

Here is the website for the Free Buryatia Foundation:

And here is where you can donate:

Please spread around or give what you can.

[suratan-zir]

How to make any territories "originally Russian" in 4 ✨easy steps✨:

First, you need to take the indigenous population of these territories (eg Crimean Tatars or Ukrainians) and deport them to remote areas like Siberia or Kolyma, killing thousands of men, women and children in the process. This way, if years later some of the people come back to their homeland, the number of indigenous population will never return to the previous level.

In the meantime, relocate many Russian families to the now vacant territories. You might also want to build several military bases in those areas, thus resettling many of your military men along with their families. In just a couple of generations, these territories will be populated largely by the descendants of your soldiers (and your new soldiers, of course!).

Establish language control in these territories. You can do this either by banning the local language entirely (i.e. making teaching, literature and songs in that language illegal), or simply by creating such an environment in which it will be possible to achieve any success in any specialty only by using the Russian language. You can mix these two techniques together.

If you still want to reduce the native population, try starting a war and using that population as cannon fodder. Highly effective!

If you did everything right, congratulations! Now the true experts, such as Elon Musk and many other "very intelligent'" people, will call these territories "originally Russian" and will urge the people there to surrender to you so that you can continue to torture, repress and kill them👍 Also you will always have a neat casus belli on your hands!

[mariacallous]

In the midst of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian children in occupied areas are facing an impossible choice: dying from military strikes or being conscripted to the Russian army after turning 18, head of the Crimean Human Rights Group Olha Skrypnyk said during the “Stolen Childhood” conference in Kyiv.

Skrypnyk stressed the importance of halting these abuses, labeling Russia’s actions as international crimes. Specifically, she condemned the propaganda aimed at indoctrinating children to serve in the Russian military, a clear violation of the Geneva Convention that prohibits such actions by an aggressor state.

New Russification wave

The United Nations reports that since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, around 2.8 million Ukrainians have been deported, including potentially 200–300 thousand children.

The Ukrainian government and NGOs believe the occupiers aim to erase the children’s Ukrainian identity and assimilate them to mitigate Russia’s demographic crisis. Additionally, there’s a significant effort to militarize these children, preparing them as future combatants against Ukraine.

Russian authorities actively use education and propaganda to justify their invasion and recruit minors into organizations like Yunarmiya, effectively grooming them as future soldiers for the Kremlin.

Crimea has become a focal point for these illegal practices, with children being particularly affected by efforts at militarization, deportations, and political persecution. “We've documented these events and proven a systematic approach by the Russian Federation to militarize children, making them a resource for their war efforts,” Skrypnyk pointed out.

The human impact

The situation has escalated to the point where Russian authorities have officially acknowledged their war against Ukraine, highlighting the need for human resources, particularly from occupied territories.

“This constitutes a large-scale international crime, demanding accountability,” Skrypnyk asserted.

The plight of Ukrainian children underlines the grave human impact of the conflict and the imperative for international action.

[beardedmrbean]

Apparently the Ukrainians took this from a Russian combatant, it’s a single shot Chinese pellet gun… I just have one question for Russia…

WW2 Stalin did this thing where he sent folks up to Siberia and the gulags and all that good stuff to pick up prisoners that were gonna be used as cannon fodder.

Double whammy of saving money by reducing the prison population and also making the nazis waste bullets on them.

Get a bunch of them lined up, maybe they've got a rock or a pointy stick, actual soldiers in the back of them to keep them "motivated to move forward" charge into the hail of bullets towards the nazis if you make it and manage to get a gun good for you keep on fighting do well enough and if you live till the end of the war you're a free man.

Don't charge and the guys behind you will kill you dead right now.

I say that part because

Putin is copying his mass murderer predecessor is all

it's a tragedy and I'm sure some would gladly surrender to the Ukrainians and go off to a POW camp and out of the cold, but I imagine there's hostages on the russian side of the line

[tomorrowusa]

Ukrainians are fighting for the survival of their own country. Russians are fighting to make Putin look less like a complete imbecile. So guess which side has better morale.

Hundreds of thousands of military age Russian males fled Russia so they wouldn't get drafted. Now some active duty Russian soldiers are following them out of the country. Armenia is one of their chosen destinations.

Sitting in a basement studio hidden in the centre of Yerevan, Artyom reflected on his decision to desert the Russian army after a year spent fighting in Ukraine. Just two weeks earlier, the former platoon commander was living in a trench. He has since abandoned his post and fled to the Armenian capital. “I did not want to participate in this war. I wanted no part in the imperialistic habits of our ruler,” he said. “But I do feel guilt in front of Ukraine. Guilt that I didn’t do this earlier … I could have said no, I just didn’t know what the consequences would be.” [ ... ] Desertion and “voluntary” surrender are punishable by lengthy jail terms in Russia, and Artyom said his commanders threatened him with prison if he dared to leave his post. He said he also heard stories of service personnel being locked up in basements in eastern Ukraine after refusing to fight, reports that have been backed up by independent Russian news organisations. “Worst-case scenario was to end up in a ‘Storm-Z’ squad,” he said, referring to so-called “punishment battalions” sent to the most exposed parts of the front with heavy losses. His chance came last month when his commander gave him a few days off, at which point he decided to flee with the help of a Russian anti-war organisation. “I knew I only had two-three days before they would start looking for me, so I had to be quick,” he said. Russian authorities have since opened up a criminal case against him. He arrived in Armenia via a third country. Like Georgia and Kazakhstan, Russians can also enter Armenia without a visa, and all three countries serve as a logical first stop for those looking to escape the fighting.

As we've written previously, Russian soldiers are poorly trained, given shoddy weapons, and often have to buy their own supplies. The Russian Army is really shit. Putin tries to compensate for this by just sending massive waves of these poorly equipped soldiers against Ukraine. Predictably, Russia suffers enormous fatalities.

The major losses suffered by Russia means that Putin needs 20,000 more mobilized troops cannon fodder every month.

Russia mobilizes over 20,000 people monthly for Ukraine war

Russian forces have been engaged in a costly and futile attack on Avdiivka near Donetsk. It's going about as you'd expect for a large but third-rate army.

Record Russian armor, personnel losses in failed attempt to take Avdiivka by storm

Russia is in a quagmire and Putin is hoping that the world will get distracted by the Middle East.

Putin is also hoping that House Republicans will do his dirty work for him.

Sarah Longwell and Bill Kristol have compiled a list of GOP House members and rated them on their support for Ukraine. Ominously, Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson gets a rating of Very Poor. However there are 82 House Republicans who get a rating of Excellent and 43 who get an Okay. Check the list to see if you are represented by any in the 125 member pro-Ukraine segment.

GOP Congressional Report Card - Republicans For Ukraine

Contact them and urge them strongly to give a high priority to support for Ukraine. Use language which would appeal to Republican thinking; mentioning Ronald Reagan's opposition to the Evil Empire in the 1980s is a plus.

For contact information and to find out exactly who represents your district, check out this site. Have your ZIP+4 ready.

Find Your Representative | house.gov

If your rep is a Democrat, send a message thanking him or her for past support for Ukraine and urge them not to forget about Ukraine in upcoming budget negotiations.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Kharkiv direction - the loses of the Russian invaders are clearly visible: Abandoned Russian T-72 main battle tank and dead soldiers, Ukraine, 2022. Source: russoldat.info

P.S. By the 514th day of the war, the army of Russian war criminals has lost 241330 (+640) fallen soldiers in Ukraine...! The task of the Ukrainian army at the moment is to destroy the personnel, armored vehicles and logistics of the army of Russian war criminals as efficiently as possible...The Russian army loses an average of one battalion killed every day...Since there is still plenty of cheap and stupid cannon fodder in Russia, the war will continue for quite some time...

[thenuclearmallard]

“Prison of the Nations”: How Russia is Using Indigenous Peoples in the War Against Ukraine

05.10.2022Police detain protesters against mobilization in Dagestan. Photo: REUTERS

For centuries, the Kremlin’s politics focused on the Russification of all the nations living on Russia’s territories, quenching national self-awareness, and pushing forth the “Russian world” ideology. This is the politics one would call imperialism. 

And now, after it started the full-scale war against Ukraine, Russia is mobilizing the indigenous population first. It uses them as cannon fodder, destroying these ethnicities to fulfill its rapacious goals. 

In this article, we’re going to discuss Russia’s politics of ethnocide. We’ll see how Russia is destroying entire ethnicities in the war, killing Ukrainians at their expense, all the while trying to save the “titular nation” of the empire — that is, ethnic Russians.

How Russia’s politics of ethnocide works

The total number of nations living on Russia’s territory approaches 200, including ethnic communities and indigenous peoples. Reaching 80%, Russia’s largest ethnic group is Russians. They are followed by Tatars (around 4%), Ukrainians (around 1–2%), Bashkirs, Chuvash people, and Chechens (each group constituting around 1%). The rest are even smaller ethnic groups.

The Volga region (the republics of Mordovia, Chuvashia, Mari-El, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, and Bashkortostan) and Karelia, the Caucasus, and the Urals are Russian territories inhabited by indigenous peoples for ages. But these peoples have limited political rights and no opportunity to develop their own cultures and languages.

Indigenous peoples in Russia are considered “non-titular” ethnic groups and are therefore viewed as second-rate and unimportant.

Currently, as many as nine indigenous peoples are already on the verge of extinction: they have no more than a thousand people left. This includes Keriks, Enets, Oroks, Negidals, and Chelkans. 

At the same time, the historical territory of small indigenous peoples constitutes approximately three-quarters of Russia’s entire territory. These lands are also where many of Russia’s economy-defining resources come from. Despite that, the Kremlin despises the histories and cultures of the peoples living there.

The so-called politics of ethnocide, that is, the politics aimed at the extermination of identities and cultures of specific nations and ethnic groups, has always been an essential part of Moscow’s strategy. 

In fact, “ethnocide” is the basis that allows the “Russian world” to “grow.” Moscow is the “imperial center” destroying the languages, cultures, and histories of the indigenous peoples, taking away their riches, and using the money made on them to spread the “Russian world” further to new territories.

How the Kremlin is set on destroying indigenous peoples in the war against Ukraine

Since the beginning of the full-scale war against Ukraine, Russia’s discriminatory approach has manifested itself in yet another dimension: it is mostly indigenous people that are sent to Ukraine to die. It is the Buryats, Dagestanis, Tuvans, Kalmyks, and Yakuts who become the “cannon fodder” of the Russian army in Ukraine — not ethnic Russians. And it is among these “non-titular” ethnic groups that a disproportionately high death rate is observed.

The thing is, Russia’s regions that are home to indigenous peoples (used as consumables in Moscow’s war to get Ukraine) are in large part depressed and economically underdeveloped. They have high unemployment rates (15 to 30%, give or take) and some of the lowest salaries in Russia.

Seeking to escape poverty, residents of those regions, particularly young people, have no other choice but to go to war either under contract or as volunteers. And Russian propaganda is only adding fuel to the fire, saying that fighting against Ukraine brings not only good money but plenty of loot too.

That said, indigenous people often belong to the least privileged caste of soldiers in the Russian army(as it happens, along with Ukrainians mobilized in temporarily occupied territories). They have practically no rights, no training, no proper supplies, food, weapons, or equipment. After all, their main task is to be a makeshift “plug” for the hole at the front. In fact, it’s themselves that are this plug. They are not supposed to “close” it using their military skills.

So we see that the Kremlin’s plan for the conquered indigenous peoples is the destruction of their cultures and languages, assimilation of the peoples themselves, and their depopulation and extinction. This is a forced policy whose goal is to plunder natural resources and establish the “Russian world” at the cost of the indigenous peoples’ lives.

That is why the Russian authorities are purposefully mobilizing these ethnic groups for the war against Ukraine. Their goal is to reduce their numbers while avoiding dissatisfaction with mass calls for death among ethnic Russians. Instead, the war against Ukraine and the discontent caused by it may give these peoples a chance for freedom. After all, the destruction of the Russian Empire will also destroy the “prison” of these nations.

And the world is already witnessing the first events that can trigger an avalanche. The announcement of the so-called partial mobilization in Russia was followed by increased internal tensions: for example, people went out to protest in Dagestan. This means that despite the seven months of blindness, the people in Russia have finally seen the true nature of Moscow’s politics. It is not just an invasion of Ukraine — it’s also discriminatory against certain ethnicities among the population of Russia itself.

[herukapadmajungiansworld]

BBC News: The Russian soldiers refusing to fight in Ukraine

BBC News - The Russian soldiers refusing to fight in Ukraine

[sophiemariepl]

Tbh I wish that people acknowledged that the supposed “anti-colonialism” of the USSR actually led to the deprivation of the POC in Russia of their own voice and the ability to stand up against white Slavic (“russkiye”) Russians.

The fact that you don't hear about racism in Russia as much as you hear about Western racism does not mean that the issue is non-existent in there. In fact, it is huge and it is deadly, as now Russia uses it's POC as cannon fodder in the invasion on Ukraine. Tuvan and Buryat soldiers are used for positions which are deadly to them. A loss of one Buryat or of one Tuvan is not equal to a loss of one “russkiy” white Slavic Russian. There are 111 million white Slavic Russians. In case of Tuvans and Buryats, it's only max. 200 thousand. If this is not systemic racism to you, idk what is.

The problem is that the USSR led to the isolation of POC in Russia from the rest of the world's decolonization movements. Because of that, POC in Russia are still stuck in a limbo - between the colonial “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir) and becoming even more marginalized in their own land. Mind you, the collectivization led to nomadic and indigenous people in Russia losing ties with their natural habitats and way of life.

[taiwantalk]

Public announcement to Russian soldiers in ukraine. You all can be vacationing in belarus if you quickly jump on prigozhin’s Wagner bandwagon asap. No arrest no combat and you no longer have to fight Putin’s war in ukraine just like the wagners.

The enrollment period is closing fast. You must act now. this may be your last chance to ditch unwarranted and senseless war of putin in ukraine. Jump on a transport truck and take as many as you can with you. The key is the more of you joining wagner now the faster the rest of you can avoid being left in ukraine to die as cannon fodders. As you can see, no one is intercepting wagners on the ground. Wagners made it halfway to Kremlin and that’s a 600 miles trip. You can too live the life of freedom. Don’t miss out!

[mariacallous]

Interviews by Lilia Yapparova. Abridged translation by Sam Breazeale.

Russia’s mobilization campaign has been going on for roughly a week now. Some new conscripts have already been sent to the front without any training whatsoever; others are sleeping on the ground in barracks that look more like prison cells. Many have been forced to purchase basic medical supplies and uniforms on their own dime, and in some cases, draftees have been issued rust-covered weapons. Meduza asked Russians who have already taken part in the country’s war against Ukraine — as contract soldiers and mercenaries — to tell us what they think of the mobilization effort.

The names in this story have been changed.

Kirill, contract soldier

If I’m being honest, they’re all going to die there. They'll be mutilated and killed. This isn’t a trained army! I, for example, served [as a contract soldier] for a long time, then chose to go [to the front in Ukraine] myself — and I still found myself unprepared. The very first day, I realized I had made the biggest mistake of my life.

When I decided to go to Ukraine, I was a staunch patriot. I believed there were Nazi formations of some kind there, like the Right Sector, the Aidar [Battalion], the Azov [Battalion]. Plus I’d watched a bunch of [Russian] films like Soltsepyok and Opolchenochka. Plus, all of the Telegram and TV channels were designed to pump [that stuff into] our brains.

But even while we were still being driven across the border in the Ural [truck], I realized that we were the occupiers, we were the fascists. I [...] was sitting in the truck bed, watching the scenes going by. What we were leaving behind. All of those destroyed villages in Kharkiv. I realized we were actually destroying a country. Along with its civilian population.

You’d go through a village and children would run out onto the road and gesture after you: either “smoke” or “eat.” I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. The world was upside down; I felt empty inside. You realize all of your life so far was fiction. A soap bubble.

We traveled like that to Izium [in the Kharkiv region]. I spent three days on the frontline — and got another wake-up call when our own artillery fired at us. Then those stupid commands began…

I’ve served more than a few times, and I can tell when I’m being sent in for slaughter. And I immediately told this guy with big epaulets to fuck off: “I’m not just a bargaining chip! I’m a soldier for the Russian army! You can’t just throw me under the bus like this!” To which he answered, “You’re all just cannon fodder. You’re the third group of people to form this battalion. Do you know where the first two groups died? And you’ll die here.” Then he told my commander, “Send in the meat." [Us.]

They were trying to advance, and they threw us at a Ukrainian stronghold, where tanks, artillery, and machine guns were all operating. And the Ukrainians had hundreds of troops, while we only had 40.

You wake up as one person, and by the evening, you’ve become someone else. You go through such intense metamorphoses that it scares you. It scares you how blind you were below. And deaf.

I lay in a trench for two or three days — and left in the first vehicle I saw. I jumped into the first vehicle that left our positions to get food and munitions. At first, they said, “We don’t take refusers,” but I told them, “I have a gun, so you’ll take me one way or another.”

[...]

This is a scary time: 1922–1939 is starting all over again, 100 years later. And I really want to tell [the new conscripts] that they should all come back — however many there are — and turn towards Moscow.

Even when I’ve tried to explain things to people, they haven’t listened. Nobody believes words, you see? I was like that, too — and there was a time when people who had already been to Ukraine tried to talk me out of it. They called me right from the front lines and told me not to even think about it.

When I look at [the people being mobilized now], I see myself three months ago. But I don’t have any sympathy for them. If you have a choice, choose life! Sure, it might be life in prison; sure, the state will consider you a criminal — for you’ll know you’re not a criminal. You won’t kill anybody. You won’t shoot anybody.

We’re the fascists — really. We’re the fascists. There’s not another word for it. There really is a denazification happening in Ukraine right now — not for Ukraine, but for us.

Anatoly, mercenary

I got a summons the other day. I immediately called the military commissar and told him where he could go. He took offense: “Why are you talking to me like that?” Well, how am I supposed to talk to you, comrade colonel? I did six months there [in Ukraine as part of the Wagner PMC]. Are you kidding me with this?

“We didn’t know you’d just returned from there!” Well, of course [Wagner] didn’t share that information — officially, it was as if we weren’t even there.

And the military commissar knows perfectly well who it was mouthing off at hiim — I introduced myself and everything. He said, “Well, come on over, we’ll get it sorted out.” There’s no way I’m going there — I understand perfectly well that I’ll be put in handcuffs, stick me on a train, and send me far away.

A bunch of newly-mobilized guys have already called me: “What do I do? Where should I go?” Go on, I tell them, serve. I told them what boots to buy and how to behave themselves there.

Some of my friends have recently had children — theoretically, those people can’t be conscripted. But they’re conscripting them anyway. People are clutching their head; they don’t know what to do. A lot of people have loans and mortgages — who’s going to pay them now?

I don’t understand what this crowd of people is going to achieve. If we, the professionals, got our asses whipped out there, what do they think they’re going to do? The best case scenario is that they stay in the reserves [in the Donbas]. The worst is that they die a hero’s death. Two options.

Especially if they get thrown out there after a week of training. A week — that’s nothing at all! Combat units need at least a month to a month and a half for unit cohesion.

[...]

These [newly drafted] IT guys and other cannon fodder — what are they going to do? They won’t change anything [at the front] and they won’t solve anything. A friend of mine had a son that served for a year — and he got a summons, too. He didn’t so much as smell gunpowder — he may have fired a weapon twice throughout his whole service. So what are they sending him for? What’s going to happen to him? I just don’t get it. I can’t wrap my head around it.

So why recruit these 300,000? I think there’s going to be a total standoff: NATO against Russia. I hope they don’t throw these conscripts to the front immediately and instead spend some time training them. So that there’s a reserve that’s ready for battle. And then [if there’s a direct confrontation with NATO] they’d be ready as soon as the command was given.

Everyone’s scared. I’m scared, too, to be honest. Something bad is coming at full force — I can sense it.

Chingiz, contract soldier

This [mobilization] is evidence that the army’s been defeated. And they’re conscripting anyone and everyone. A lot of people don’t understand, but that’s how it is: Russia’s professional army has been destroyed over the last six months — and now they’re conscripting the entire reserve.

I was a contract soldier myself — and [even] we were given inadequate training. The photo reports [of the training] are one thing — but the results [at the front] showed that it was all a Potemkin village.

Even we had huge losses. And now it’s just a crowd of people who were given a form. [...] What difference are they going to make [on the frontline]? They’re just going to die for nothing. These are just civilians who did their [mandatory] military service at some point.

Everyone who’s there [in Ukraine] right now just wants to go home. They want someone to come replace them. Even [my fellow servicemen] who supported the war wanted to go home: “We need to at least take a break at home for a month or two — then we can go back and defeat the fascist scum.”

[...]

A friend of mine who’s been drafted is supposed to go [to Ukraine] two weeks from now. In theory, he’s against the war. But his position… I don’t understand it. “Well, fine. They drafted me, so I guess I’d go.” He’s docile like that. I don’t like that — I tried to talk him out of it. But he goes, “What, and go to jail for a year? It’s better to help the other guys.” That’s become a standard phrase: “I need to help the other guys.” But all of the decent guys have already gotten out of there.

I’ve thought a lot about where this deference comes from. It’s like you try to explain to people that Russia is the aggressor, Putin is the aggressor. And that “protecting the Motherland” in a foreign country while destroying their cities all just looks suspect. That it’s not Ukraine who attacked first, it’s Russia. But they all have the same argument: “Well, what if NATO came? And besides, the Ukrainians are Nazis.” That kind of thing. [...]

I tell them, “Well, if NATO came, then what? Would our lives get worse? And what — like your life is good now?” They don’t even have any good arguments about why NATO is bad — they just repeat the mantras [they hear on TV]. About how “Russia was forced to launch this preventative strike, because otherwise NATO would have come right up to our borders.”

[...]

I went [to Ukraine] in January — and it’s true: we all thought we were just going there for military exercises. [...] I saw how unprepared the Russian army was. We just kept moving forward, and they kept bombing us. Then we got to Kyiv, dug in, and they started bombing us again. That’s been the whole war.

The civilians would run from us: we kept entering empty villages. The families who remained hung up white flags and stayed inside their houses. In Buzova [a village near Kyiv], I saw a family with a child who was in pain. His mother was crying — I saw it myself — and telling him she couldn’t call an ambulance. Because of the war. The child was in a lot of pain. [He was] five years old. And a few days later, I learned he had died. Which means he died because of us. Because we’d gone there.

[warsofasoiaf]

Hi, Russia has now declared mobilisation against Ukraine. Do you think this will change much in the war?

Mobilization can change a lot of things, but not right away. It takes a long time to mobilize and train recruits to become effective in war. Mobilizing 300,000 troops is a Herculean task - you need to get those people together, ship them to training, get the instructors to train them, feed them, issue them uniforms, and ship them to the front. That requires a level of logistics that Russia has not demonstrated, they have difficulty shipping materiel to the front, manpower is even harder. To that end, I would say that Ukraine should disrupt more logistics hubs - destroy more railroad hubs and supply dumps.

My guess is that Russia is hoping the raw tide of numbers can hold fixed positions and hold back-end roles to free up more soldiers for attack operations. So a lot of these conscripts will be cannon fodder, but they’d also be used for roles in occupied territories and to fill out parts of the line. That might actually help turn the tide for Russia’s war effort, but it also could just mean that the line troops break at the first touch of combat - green troops are notoriously unreliable. I think though, Putin fears that his lines are too extended and pulling back will only enable Ukraine to make more gains. More manpower can help shore up the gaps and also increase the pain that Russia can inflict.  If Ukraine can push further into Luhansk, perhaps taking Svatove or cutting the supply route from Valyuki, that will leave troops in Luhansk under considerable pressure, I think Putin realizes that the only thing that can keep his lines from buckling is men. Otherwise, he’ll keep the reserves training through the winter hoping to make them capable of making a difference on the ground, but I don’t think he’ll do that. The Russian economy is already showing signs of severe decline, the effort of this is likely to cause severe economic disruption and more protests.

Interestingly enough, the speech Putin gave seemed a bit CYA to me, he took great care to have the military be the one who recommended the mobilization. That to be sounds like he’s planning to have Shoygu and/or Gerasimov take the blame if this goes south. 

I think Putin is becoming increasingly cornered and he knows it. Sweden and Finland are on the cusp of joining NATO, Russia’s army is a laughingstock, China is already starting to put distance between him (not even joining his motion to ban Zelensky from speaking), India has already publicly chided Putin at the SCO meeting. The comments on nuclear weapons aren’t really hinged in reality, the nuclear threats have been coming from Russia, not Ukraine. Given Putin’s retreat from reality, that means there’s a true danger - perhaps he decides to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle if Ukraine scores another breakthrough in Luhansk or Kherson falls. Or perhaps a bunch of scared armed reservists fearing death in a foreign war cause significant economic disruption at home. It’s a gamble, and not one likely to work in Putin’s favor. What worries me more is if this fails, what’s Putin’s next escalation? Putin is crumbling before our eyes, but we might see another Nerobefehl with global consequences.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[beardedmrbean]

Mobilized Russian troops fighting in Ukraine have complained in a video about old equipment, a lack of effective command and being sent out as cannon fodder.

Since the start of the war, reports have abounded of low morale among Russian troops and a lack of training and equipment, in particular for those who have been mobilized as part of the draft announced at the end of September.

But this latest clip, which as of Monday had been viewed more than 100,000 times, gave a snapshot of the extent of some of the broader complaints that have been emerging on social media from mobilized Russian troops.

Tweeted by the account of War Translated, the clip shows a group of Russian soldiers in an undisclosed location behind a man in front saying: "We appeal to commander-in-chief Vladimir Putin." He said they were drafted from Russia's Kaliningrad, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk regions and were serving in the 5th Motorized Brigade.

Among his list of complaints was how his regiment hadn't been given any strategy or tactics. They had also been sent into assaults with no cooperation with commanders, a lack of fire support and no way to conduct night and day surveillance.

"We're lacking armored vehicles and artillery support ahead of the assault," he said, and "weapons from the 1940s are being used, including mortars and guns."

He spoke of how there was no air reconnaissance, no written combat orders and that the group was prepared for territorial defense, not as an assault unit. During its first assault, six of the regiment's troops had been killed in one trench.

"We're asking you to pay rigorous attention to the preparation of the assault by the brigade," he said, adding that punitive measures against them for being rioters "are already being prepared," including being locked in cellars.

"We have no rioters," he said, "we are all 30 to 40 years old, we have families and children and higher education."

Another man in the group complains about old combat vehicles. "People die for nothing, people are sent into frontal attacks, sent into an empty field in the 21st century," the unnamed soldier said.

"We can't fight like that and we won't achieve victory with minor casualties." While on other fronts, Russian personnel had been preserved in favor of vehicles and artillery, "the complete opposite happens here."

"We are not meat, we are ready to fight with dignity," he added.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry about the claims, which come as Western analysts are noting how Russian forces have relied on older equipment in the face of huge losses of vehicles.

[tomorrowusa]

Thanks to House Republicans under orders from Putin's puppet Donald Trump, Ukrainian forces are being starved of ammunition. Despite that, they are still outfighting Russian invaders in the east of the country.

Putin is desperately sending mass waves of cannon fodder dubbed "meat waves" against better trained Ukrainians.

Russia's 'meat wave' assaults leave frozen corpses uncollected as Russian soldiers 'just go and die,' Ukrainian sniper says

Russia's "meat assault" tactics on a key battlefield are leaving frozen bodies that Russia isn't collecting, a Ukrainian sniper said. The sniper, a special forces officer with the call sign "Bess," told CNN that the dead soldiers "just lie there frozen." "Nobody evacuates them, nobody takes them away," he said. "It feels like people don't have a specific task, they just go and die." Bess, which means "demon" in Ukrainian, spoke to CNN from Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that for months has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the war. The tactic deployed by Russia involves sending wave after wave of generally poorly trained and unsupported soldiers at Ukrainian positions, to try to overwhelm them so that other troops can then progress. The tactic, which experts say has been used frequently in the war, is one that Russian elite soldiers — paratroopers and marines — have recently been refusing to take part in, a Ukrainian official said.

Putin is a sociopath who has as little regard for Russian lives as he does for Ukrainians. In the past ten days, estimated daily Russian fatalities have ranged from a low of 740 to a high of 1,070. At that rate, cumulative Russian fatalities could reach 400,000 as soon as Valentine's Day.

To Putin the war is just a board game with lots of blood.

The next time there's a mutiny in Russia, I hope its leaders don't foolishly back down like the late Yevgeny Prigozhin did. Giving Putin a break will only result in them ending up like Prigozhin.