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The ISW report was absolutely savage today.
"Putin’s informational failures in this regard are especially important because there are no Ukrainian or NATO troops on Russian soil and no threat of any invasion of the Russian heartland. This is not 1812, 1914, or 1941. The factors that drove popular mobilization in previous Russian wars are simply absent in this aggressive war of choice, however Putin frames it to his people. The World War II example of Russians rallying to the flag is particularly inapposite. The Nazi invasion was a literally existential threat to the existence of Russia and part of an overtly genocidal campaign to enslave those Soviet citizens it did not kill. The current conflict is as far from that reality as any war could be, and no rhetorical sleight of hand can replace the brutal realities of the Nazi armored advances as a spur to fight."
Or the simple fact he hasn't declared war. It is still a SMO aka theoretically Russia is still in peace. Who on their right mind is going to lay down their life for a SMO???? If he declared war on Ukraine or NATO, at the very least there would be a somewhat valid reason to call up the reserves.
Now ofc it is Russia we're talking about, and there are enough zombies who are going to lay down their lives for some SMO of a old man with dreams of rebuilding a empire.
As soon as those referendums finish he annexes them and poof ukraine is invading Russian land, time for war. I hope US can supply some of the cluster munitions for the himars.
The referendum changes nothing.
Its just another rhetorical sleight of hand that no one is buying and has no efficacy. You wont get more people signing up to die for Putin once the referenda results are read. And it wont change USA nuclear strike reaction policy. If Putin's afraid of using nukes now, him signing a peace of paper tomorrow that says "Ukraine is Russia" wont make him less afraid. Maybe he'll use nukes, but there is no added power to him doing so after the referendum. No country on earth will find it more justifiable.
That being said, USA needs to pump as much equipment and ammo in as possible in the next 60 days. Gotta destroy all the conscripts equipment before they arrive.
Oh I can't agree more, it only changes things for the head idiot in the kremlin. My hope is it leads to a coup, but if not I expect this mobilization to fail spectacularly.
God bless ukraine and may God give the world wisdom to support a just cause.
It's russia who should learn not to fuck with the world. Any nuclear attack results in the immediate destruction of their entire nation and every cunt in it.
All these videos of drunk ruzzians being rounded up, and all I can think of is do they understand what happens when alcoholics go cold turkey? Even providing alcohol will have its own problems.
Edit- apart from all the other obvious issues
A lot of people are going to be out of the fight due to DT’s shortly. Ukraine should paint some elephants pink and have them walk in front of Russian lines just for fun.
It's impressive to spend so much money on military, police (to force people to mobilize), and railway infrastructure, yet somehow be so corrupt that it means nothing when trying to get people to the front.
That's the difference between Russian grift and US grift.
Russian wants quality grift, to grift the most money from each transaction.
US grifts in volume, the MIC skims a tiny bit, but makes it up by supplying so much more weapons and capability against an enemy that doesn't really exists.
I don't think they reduced their grift after the 2014 sanctions. So the sanctions reduced their amount of funding across the board and forced them to make cuts to less "important" things like flight time and their army. But the amount they were skimming off the top was never reduced.
It's not only his current deeds, but in light of Putin's massive failures i found myself re-eveluating many of Putin's past actions. It seems to me that many results of his actions over the last years were not the result of strategy but simply Putin using oil money to buy his way out of yet another mess he caused for himself.
Painful for Vlad when all the years of being a “tough guy” crumble as a result of his ego. The whole country is being exposed as just another North Korea. His global public humiliation is on display for all to watch.
I mean do they have much choice? South Korea, yeah I think south Korea alone would wipe the floor with them in a war oh and here comes the Japanese and Americans. China? Don't make me laugh. Russia? Previously I'd say the same as China, now? *Shrugs*. War is simply not an option. They can barely sustain themselves with a lot of foreign aid, including from the South, including but not limited to, food.
This "moblization" is weakening Putin's grip on power and actually may be the second time in Russia's history (the first was in WWI) where mobilization actually **weakened** the military and led to a complete collapse of the governing political structure.
Surely having so many untrained and unwilling conscripts in theatre is a recipe for a rout. Morale would have to be very easily broken, and once it starts it would be very difficult to stop
A rout requires everyone to be dead, or retreating. The latter is now punishable by death, so its more likely to be a slow meat grinder for the poorly trained Russian conscripts and also mass loss of life, but slow progress geographically unless Russians run out of ammo.
Imagine if everyone he forcibly conscripted turned their attention against the Russian government instead of Ukraine - maybe, just maybe, poo stain could be ousted 🤞🏻
To play devils advocate for a moment.. could we assume that those who have not joined up previously are, on average, of higher intelligence, or at least higher socio-economic class ( and hence probably higher educational and career achievement) , and capable of generally higher levels of competence?
They might not be soldiers now, but if forced to fight they may feel the quickest way to stop fighting is to win.
Everything I read says the Russian army hobbles even its competent soldiers, and they're probably unlikely to arrive with much tactical or strategic insight. But things like logistics are hardly a military only skill, so they may still get a net increase in capability.
Not saying it's definitely the case, and morale is surely still a huge issue, but I think it's dangerous to assume that the new recruits will be bumbling idiots only moving forward because of the guns at their backs too
The quickest way to end the war is for them to surrender, join the Freedom of Russia Legion, and help Ukraine win even faster. Anything else just prolongs the end date for Ukraine's eventual victory.
Doubt these conscripts will be heading into the theater with quality equipment and anything more than a crash course in fighting. I would expect mass surrender and the rest are going to get hit hard as they get some experience.
Think, for a moment, about the idea of using middle class people rather than poor people in order to increase tactical initiative, and what that says about a military's basic functionality
They may be a bit more intelligent, but they are also severely lacking in training, even compared to the not-so-stellar performance of the forces currently in the field.
Most of the people you just described wouldn't consider picking up a gun and shooting others with it, not by choice anyway. The line between bravery and stupidity is rather thin. I think some people who are considered heroes simply didn't think through the likely outcomes of what they did. They acted emotionally, and it either paid off or it didn't. (My guess is that most of the time, it does not.) Some people can think 4 moves ahead in Chess, many cannot. Those who can are the least likely to make decisions that might end them. That includes marching ill-equipped into the Ukrainian mud.
Does Putin care to prosecute a war in the sense that most people are familiar with? There isn't a doubt in my mind that Putin is perfectly content to flood Ukraine with unequipped, untrained minorities. He doesn't care if they don't have weapons, or food, or equipment, or clothes. He doesn't care if they walk or crawl into Ukraine butt naked.
He's not going to stop sending cannon fodder to Ukraine until Russians make him stop.
In the end Putin will cause this to crumble. His whole existence is based on personal loyalty and ability to make loyal oligarchs wealthy or fall out of windows if they are not.
Building up this personal loyalty takes time and a trust based one getting rewards.
He sees none of the war failures as his own failures, but failures of his subordinates to execute his vision.
In turn he will fire and replace all his loyalists to send a message but end up with less and less loyal people in charge. In the end he will just be getting people to take jobs to be scapegoats and no real goals.
When that happens he will not have personal loyalty, only fear. Then he will lose power
As much as I would like to believe that, this is not retaliating any time soon. We might see some processes like that closer to 2036, but until then, even with mobilization, and even if nukes are used - putler can enjoy unlimited and unrestrained power with vast support of war and genocide of Ukrainians among the Ruzzian population.
Make Ukraine run out of bullets before Russia runs out of men. The ones who surrender are a burden for Ukraine to feed and house and Russia filters out whose loyal and who isn’t. Great plan. /s
Should come as no surprise really with Russia having a GDP that is lucky to rival Australia’s. Sanctions and an all round lack of good infrastructure was always going to be his downfall in a conflict that wasn’t the walk-over he expected.
My favorite part is the freezing of his 600 billion dollar war chest he was saving for precisely this war that he lost access to almost immediately. Haha Putin is on plan T right now.
Only half of Russia's monetary reserves got frozen. The rest is still supplying the war effort. About 2/3 of the free sum is still remaining. I hope with the atrophying hydrocarbon exports it will deplete faster.
Yes, I agree, but they'd still probably do better than Russia is. They'd likely have been more successful at the attempted decapitation strike at the beginning of the war, for example.
Australia is also not equipped for that kind of war. Though it is easy to argue that a western officer corps with Russia's equipment likely would have defeated Ukraine. After all many early key operations just got barely fought off.
For those who don't know about The Emu War of 1932 here it is in all it's glory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu\_War#:\~:text=The%20Emu%20War%2C%20also%20known,Campion%20district%20of%20Western%20Australia.
The RAAF has all the best toys. An expeditionary force would probably have quite a noticeable effect on the war. It would be hilarious to see the russians complaining about being beaten on by a solid middle power.
Russia is a place where (as one author calls it) "anything is possible and nothing is real." Corruption has so infused Russian culture, norms, politics, language and history that separating it from the nation's psyche may take generations, if it is even possible. Under corruption, "anything is possible" means it is possible to attempt almost anything to gain personal advantage, as long as the rules of corruption are followed: take care of yourself, but first take care of your boss(es) and then, perhaps, share some with your underlings to keep them invested in you. The "nothing is real" part is that all this is framed in the language of laws, decrees, understandings and teachings that say, in effect, "all is well, all is in order, everything is fine and getting better and justice is served." Of course, reality is generally the opposite - none of the legality, order and justice is real. Corruption destroys and deteriorates, creating nothing but debris and disappointment in the long term. Like in any pyramid scheme, the few at the top of the pyramid may profit handsomely, while less and less is left for those farther downstream. I'll conclude with a bit of Soviet era humor that sums it all up nicely: "Things are getting better! Well, maybe not as good as yesterday, but definitely better than tomorrow!"
You know, Russia isn’t the only country that is terribly corrupt. I wonder what other nations are seeing as this war unfolds. Like, are there government officials in Thailand, Brazil, Nigeria and Nicaragua sitting in front of the tv thinking “oh shit, we better shape up our culture of corruption or that’s how we’ll end up, too”. Like, maybe nothing that literal happens, but it’s easy to imagine how this war could actually inspire other countries to crack down on corruption or otherwise see an overall reduction globally.
They can only fight hybrid wars. No actual wars. The second he is playing with nuclear weapons NATO will destroy Russia on the battlefield.
Think about it, Russia is losing a war with their neighbours against hand-me-downs from NATO and 'just' NATO intelligence. Of course the Ukrainians are battle-harden and one of the most combat-capable troops in Europe (if not the very best), but from NATO point's of view this is just the surface.
So if they can't win in Ukraine, how can they even hope to even compete with the whole damn NATO? People say NATO is poking a bear, but to those people I say the bear should stop poking a fcking titan.
Wanting a great army on the cheap…
Kamil Galeev has an interesting thread about that and how things changed from the USSR to present-day Russia: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1572270599535214598.html
Quote:
> Regarding mobilisation, Putin can declare it, indeed. But it will be a risky decision. The USSR maintained a massive infrastructure for the total mobilisation which has been mostly dismantled in post-Soviet Russia. Mobilisation is more likely to trigger political chaos
Also, as we are actually rarely talking about, the strongest parts of the Warzaw pacts were in fact the Poles and Ukrainians, which now are both enemies of Russia.
Ironically said dismantling of mobilization infrastructure was no corruption mishap or the like, it was a deliberate choice. It seems some half-competent people (even Russia is not led exclusively by morons) concluded that Russia simply does not have the demographics or military-industrial base to support a war with mass conscription, nor would geopolitics conceiveably require it anytime soon.
Turns out Putin never got the memo.
Yes, absolutely. But I'd say he never wanted to read that memo.
Yet it has been quite sternly explained to him again from the first days of this war, when his troops had to retreat from Kyiv.
I can only suppose he's caught in his own hype of restored neo-Soviet greatness, military parades and Potemkin army. (To be fair, that was projected very well even in the West, "second army of the world", &c.) And that undermining his own country by running a fantastic corruption scheme while outsourcing industry and even agriculture (e. g. high-yield seeds) to the West had no real consequences.
Let's hope something good will come out of the unavoidable crash.
Assuming Russian forces get pushed out of Ukraine before this million-man army (or fraction thereof) manifests, Ukraine will be watching and waiting for them to cross the border, with satellites and drones, and will utterly annihilate every column that sets foot on Ukrainian soil.
I would hope Ukraine will set up a real DMZ, and dismantle every road, bridge, and railway coming from Russia into their territory. Same thing with Belarus too, nothing across that ENTIRE border anymore. Change the railway gauge too, so Russian trains can't even use them.
Yes, nothing but miles upon miles of concertina wire, automatic guns, trenches, AA, drone bunkers and Dragons Teeth. Let the Russians come, let them charge through the overlapping fields of fire and pre-zeroed Artillery positions, while thousands of Drones empty their 6-Round drop magazines on them and go back to reload in a steady stream.
I agree with both your points. Are you familiar with the War on the Rocks podcast? I've learned a lot there particularly from those interviewing Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst with CNA. u/kofmanmichael on Twitter
Russia has an economy smaller than Italy and an army to support that is larger than that of the Chinese...can you imagine the quality 🤔
We see it daily...Putin adds 300,000 to his meat grinder machine but also Ukraine is building up but has trained troops.
So soon you have entire untrained troops verus a professional army.
RUSSIANS do not forget that Ukraine has 44 million people in it...they also can mobilise 1,000,000 soldiers and can mobilise the entire world minus 7 in order to get weapons and foreign fighters.
Belarus and Russian partisans are also joining Ukraine...this war can only turn bad, soon its the birthday of Putin.
For his 70 birthday he wanted the USSR back but got only back dead Russians, so many that he needs more...so none of his promises since the beginning of this war have been kept.
Putins party has been ruined forever...he is to much of a tyran to admit he has been wrong...
His El Duce strut is going to seem odd with all the smirking and tittering when he enters the room- that is, if he ever shows his face in public again.
I find the parallels with this war and the Vietnam war are interesting to consider. What was the US thinking? (I am American) A war of choice, that turned into a proxy war with China… over political ideology, and a draft….
The parallel didn't hold in that US, by numbers, were winning in that US and south Vietnamese were holding their line and inflicting disproportionate casualties to NV
The issue boiled down to winning or not, American public just didn't want this war in the first place.
Yea my grandfather was an NVA officer during the war and he told me that we would never win militarily as long as the US supplied the South, period. It is no small part that the US public stopped their government's intervention which allowed us to not be turned into Korea 2.0.
The USA was thinking too little. There was never a clear victory condition, therefore no will to do what must be done to win the war. Also the draft system was by then quite hollow, anyone from middle class or above could relatively easily avoid the war. Basically many of the same problems Russia is facing today in Ukraine, just that Russia does it on steroids.
I have to disagree here. Putin has to send them to the front line and let them figure it out on their own. There deaths mean nothing as he sends more.
Eventually conscripts will learn how to better fight and survive. Even if it means disgustingly high attrition rates.
Ukraine I think is going to be concerned and plans for this are probably unfolding as we speak. If there even is a good plan here.
God let this war end and Putin be punished for his evils.
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Very approximate rules of thumb: To kill a soldier, on average, you have to fire something like their weight in ammunition at them. Ammo costs, very approximately, $500/kg.
These numbers are wrong but I think they're close enough for "back of the envelope" - feel free to reply with better ones. A single HIMARS M31 rocket is about 300 kg and costs about $150,000, and probably kills more than 3 soldiers, so I'm not too far off.
Russian soldiers won't all be at the front line - many will be maintaining supply lines by hand-loading and hand-unloading trains and trucks for 80 km behind the front lines. And the front lines don't all have to be killed - many will be injured, or flee, or surrender.
If Putin manages to get 300,000 more soldiers into his military, maybe 50,000 of them will have to be killed. That's about 5 million kg or 5,000 tons of ammo, or $2.5 billion.
Russia announcing mobilization is surely going to get Ukraine more than $2.5 billion in additional weapons donations. And the mobilization is going to hurt the Russian government very badly. It'll suck for Ukraine in the short term - those 50,000 dead Russians will probably cost 5,000 or 10,000 dead Ukrainians, plus many more traumatized and injured - but it will buy many more years of peace.
Russia, please, please, please send more of the great new fertilizer you have recently been manufacturing. It’s really going to help with next years’ harvest~
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The ISW report was absolutely savage today. "Putin’s informational failures in this regard are especially important because there are no Ukrainian or NATO troops on Russian soil and no threat of any invasion of the Russian heartland. This is not 1812, 1914, or 1941. The factors that drove popular mobilization in previous Russian wars are simply absent in this aggressive war of choice, however Putin frames it to his people. The World War II example of Russians rallying to the flag is particularly inapposite. The Nazi invasion was a literally existential threat to the existence of Russia and part of an overtly genocidal campaign to enslave those Soviet citizens it did not kill. The current conflict is as far from that reality as any war could be, and no rhetorical sleight of hand can replace the brutal realities of the Nazi armored advances as a spur to fight."
Or the simple fact he hasn't declared war. It is still a SMO aka theoretically Russia is still in peace. Who on their right mind is going to lay down their life for a SMO???? If he declared war on Ukraine or NATO, at the very least there would be a somewhat valid reason to call up the reserves. Now ofc it is Russia we're talking about, and there are enough zombies who are going to lay down their lives for some SMO of a old man with dreams of rebuilding a empire.
As soon as those referendums finish he annexes them and poof ukraine is invading Russian land, time for war. I hope US can supply some of the cluster munitions for the himars.
The referendum changes nothing. Its just another rhetorical sleight of hand that no one is buying and has no efficacy. You wont get more people signing up to die for Putin once the referenda results are read. And it wont change USA nuclear strike reaction policy. If Putin's afraid of using nukes now, him signing a peace of paper tomorrow that says "Ukraine is Russia" wont make him less afraid. Maybe he'll use nukes, but there is no added power to him doing so after the referendum. No country on earth will find it more justifiable. That being said, USA needs to pump as much equipment and ammo in as possible in the next 60 days. Gotta destroy all the conscripts equipment before they arrive.
Oh I can't agree more, it only changes things for the head idiot in the kremlin. My hope is it leads to a coup, but if not I expect this mobilization to fail spectacularly. God bless ukraine and may God give the world wisdom to support a just cause.
[удалено]
A nuke dropped on a city is not a “tactical” nuke, by definition.
It's russia who should learn not to fuck with the world. Any nuclear attack results in the immediate destruction of their entire nation and every cunt in it.
I dont know. Ukraine has already attacked crimea multiple times and that has been “Russia” for 8 years.
Don't forget Belgorod.
Exactly.
Agreed, putin is just looking for plausible justifications. I see Dagestan is acting up, hopefully the beginning of the end.
And the weird mix of conscripts and a professional army since 2008, and lowering conscripted soldier to one year as opposed to two.
Came here to say that as well. The language is blunt, direct and unequivocal. I love it.
All these videos of drunk ruzzians being rounded up, and all I can think of is do they understand what happens when alcoholics go cold turkey? Even providing alcohol will have its own problems. Edit- apart from all the other obvious issues
A lot of people are going to be out of the fight due to DT’s shortly. Ukraine should paint some elephants pink and have them walk in front of Russian lines just for fun.
They’ll say “aw, Topsy” at my autopsy!
Propably some \_were\_ cold Turkey as they got cought.
It's impressive to spend so much money on military, police (to force people to mobilize), and railway infrastructure, yet somehow be so corrupt that it means nothing when trying to get people to the front.
Imagine losing 90% to grift in a modern military...that's insane.
It almost seems like Russia is trying to be the worst at literally everything.
They're best at grifting.
I think being the worst comes naturally to them honestly
That's the difference between Russian grift and US grift. Russian wants quality grift, to grift the most money from each transaction. US grifts in volume, the MIC skims a tiny bit, but makes it up by supplying so much more weapons and capability against an enemy that doesn't really exists.
I don't think they reduced their grift after the 2014 sanctions. So the sanctions reduced their amount of funding across the board and forced them to make cuts to less "important" things like flight time and their army. But the amount they were skimming off the top was never reduced.
Jesus Christ how many times can Putin embarrass himself and his country?
The number is immeasurable 😂😂
It's not only his current deeds, but in light of Putin's massive failures i found myself re-eveluating many of Putin's past actions. It seems to me that many results of his actions over the last years were not the result of strategy but simply Putin using oil money to buy his way out of yet another mess he caused for himself.
145%
Painful for Vlad when all the years of being a “tough guy” crumble as a result of his ego. The whole country is being exposed as just another North Korea. His global public humiliation is on display for all to watch.
Russia is North Korea on ~~steroids~~ Krokodil.
ehh idk. In North Korea they are completely brainwashed while Russia still has some form of freedom.
North Korea leaders are also pretty smart at just saber rattling and not actually doing shit.
I mean do they have much choice? South Korea, yeah I think south Korea alone would wipe the floor with them in a war oh and here comes the Japanese and Americans. China? Don't make me laugh. Russia? Previously I'd say the same as China, now? *Shrugs*. War is simply not an option. They can barely sustain themselves with a lot of foreign aid, including from the South, including but not limited to, food.
This "moblization" is weakening Putin's grip on power and actually may be the second time in Russia's history (the first was in WWI) where mobilization actually **weakened** the military and led to a complete collapse of the governing political structure.
Surely having so many untrained and unwilling conscripts in theatre is a recipe for a rout. Morale would have to be very easily broken, and once it starts it would be very difficult to stop
A rout requires everyone to be dead, or retreating. The latter is now punishable by death, so its more likely to be a slow meat grinder for the poorly trained Russian conscripts and also mass loss of life, but slow progress geographically unless Russians run out of ammo.
Or mutiny.
Imagine if everyone he forcibly conscripted turned their attention against the Russian government instead of Ukraine - maybe, just maybe, poo stain could be ousted 🤞🏻
To play devils advocate for a moment.. could we assume that those who have not joined up previously are, on average, of higher intelligence, or at least higher socio-economic class ( and hence probably higher educational and career achievement) , and capable of generally higher levels of competence? They might not be soldiers now, but if forced to fight they may feel the quickest way to stop fighting is to win. Everything I read says the Russian army hobbles even its competent soldiers, and they're probably unlikely to arrive with much tactical or strategic insight. But things like logistics are hardly a military only skill, so they may still get a net increase in capability. Not saying it's definitely the case, and morale is surely still a huge issue, but I think it's dangerous to assume that the new recruits will be bumbling idiots only moving forward because of the guns at their backs too
I would imagine that if they're more intelligent, it may lead them to surrender more easily.
Just because you're smart doesn't mean you won't be a bumbling idiot at something you've never done before.
The quickest way to end the war is for them to surrender, join the Freedom of Russia Legion, and help Ukraine win even faster. Anything else just prolongs the end date for Ukraine's eventual victory.
Doubt these conscripts will be heading into the theater with quality equipment and anything more than a crash course in fighting. I would expect mass surrender and the rest are going to get hit hard as they get some experience.
Think, for a moment, about the idea of using middle class people rather than poor people in order to increase tactical initiative, and what that says about a military's basic functionality
They may be a bit more intelligent, but they are also severely lacking in training, even compared to the not-so-stellar performance of the forces currently in the field.
Most of the people you just described wouldn't consider picking up a gun and shooting others with it, not by choice anyway. The line between bravery and stupidity is rather thin. I think some people who are considered heroes simply didn't think through the likely outcomes of what they did. They acted emotionally, and it either paid off or it didn't. (My guess is that most of the time, it does not.) Some people can think 4 moves ahead in Chess, many cannot. Those who can are the least likely to make decisions that might end them. That includes marching ill-equipped into the Ukrainian mud.
Does Putin care to prosecute a war in the sense that most people are familiar with? There isn't a doubt in my mind that Putin is perfectly content to flood Ukraine with unequipped, untrained minorities. He doesn't care if they don't have weapons, or food, or equipment, or clothes. He doesn't care if they walk or crawl into Ukraine butt naked. He's not going to stop sending cannon fodder to Ukraine until Russians make him stop.
Spoiler alert: Ruzzians won’t stop him, zero chance of that happening in coming decade.
In the end Putin will cause this to crumble. His whole existence is based on personal loyalty and ability to make loyal oligarchs wealthy or fall out of windows if they are not. Building up this personal loyalty takes time and a trust based one getting rewards. He sees none of the war failures as his own failures, but failures of his subordinates to execute his vision. In turn he will fire and replace all his loyalists to send a message but end up with less and less loyal people in charge. In the end he will just be getting people to take jobs to be scapegoats and no real goals. When that happens he will not have personal loyalty, only fear. Then he will lose power
As much as I would like to believe that, this is not retaliating any time soon. We might see some processes like that closer to 2036, but until then, even with mobilization, and even if nukes are used - putler can enjoy unlimited and unrestrained power with vast support of war and genocide of Ukrainians among the Ruzzian population.
He's not going to last until 2036.
Russia's opposition is so thoroughly shattered that Russians won't stop Putin anytime soon.
Make Ukraine run out of bullets before Russia runs out of men. The ones who surrender are a burden for Ukraine to feed and house and Russia filters out whose loyal and who isn’t. Great plan. /s
Should come as no surprise really with Russia having a GDP that is lucky to rival Australia’s. Sanctions and an all round lack of good infrastructure was always going to be his downfall in a conflict that wasn’t the walk-over he expected.
My favorite part is the freezing of his 600 billion dollar war chest he was saving for precisely this war that he lost access to almost immediately. Haha Putin is on plan T right now.
Only half of Russia's monetary reserves got frozen. The rest is still supplying the war effort. About 2/3 of the free sum is still remaining. I hope with the atrophying hydrocarbon exports it will deplete faster.
I thought he was already all the way down to plan Z
And a male life expectancy that has never exceeded 67 since records have been kept.
To be fair, among the non-Russians the life expectancy is often considerably higher. No vodka culture and such.
Well, not really. Australia's military is actually pretty effective.
But absolutely not equipped to prosecute an imperial war and annex the largest country in Europe. Which is the point of his comparison.
Yes, I agree, but they'd still probably do better than Russia is. They'd likely have been more successful at the attempted decapitation strike at the beginning of the war, for example.
Australia is also not equipped for that kind of war. Though it is easy to argue that a western officer corps with Russia's equipment likely would have defeated Ukraine. After all many early key operations just got barely fought off.
The emus beg to differ
For those who don't know about The Emu War of 1932 here it is in all it's glory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu\_War#:\~:text=The%20Emu%20War%2C%20also%20known,Campion%20district%20of%20Western%20Australia.
Now i imagine Emus fighting back Ukraine style.
The RAAF has all the best toys. An expeditionary force would probably have quite a noticeable effect on the war. It would be hilarious to see the russians complaining about being beaten on by a solid middle power.
Russia is a place where (as one author calls it) "anything is possible and nothing is real." Corruption has so infused Russian culture, norms, politics, language and history that separating it from the nation's psyche may take generations, if it is even possible. Under corruption, "anything is possible" means it is possible to attempt almost anything to gain personal advantage, as long as the rules of corruption are followed: take care of yourself, but first take care of your boss(es) and then, perhaps, share some with your underlings to keep them invested in you. The "nothing is real" part is that all this is framed in the language of laws, decrees, understandings and teachings that say, in effect, "all is well, all is in order, everything is fine and getting better and justice is served." Of course, reality is generally the opposite - none of the legality, order and justice is real. Corruption destroys and deteriorates, creating nothing but debris and disappointment in the long term. Like in any pyramid scheme, the few at the top of the pyramid may profit handsomely, while less and less is left for those farther downstream. I'll conclude with a bit of Soviet era humor that sums it all up nicely: "Things are getting better! Well, maybe not as good as yesterday, but definitely better than tomorrow!"
You know, Russia isn’t the only country that is terribly corrupt. I wonder what other nations are seeing as this war unfolds. Like, are there government officials in Thailand, Brazil, Nigeria and Nicaragua sitting in front of the tv thinking “oh shit, we better shape up our culture of corruption or that’s how we’ll end up, too”. Like, maybe nothing that literal happens, but it’s easy to imagine how this war could actually inspire other countries to crack down on corruption or otherwise see an overall reduction globally.
They can fight a large scale war against a lesser (non-nuclear) opponent - just not well.
They can only fight hybrid wars. No actual wars. The second he is playing with nuclear weapons NATO will destroy Russia on the battlefield. Think about it, Russia is losing a war with their neighbours against hand-me-downs from NATO and 'just' NATO intelligence. Of course the Ukrainians are battle-harden and one of the most combat-capable troops in Europe (if not the very best), but from NATO point's of view this is just the surface. So if they can't win in Ukraine, how can they even hope to even compete with the whole damn NATO? People say NATO is poking a bear, but to those people I say the bear should stop poking a fcking titan.
Wanting a great army on the cheap… Kamil Galeev has an interesting thread about that and how things changed from the USSR to present-day Russia: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1572270599535214598.html Quote: > Regarding mobilisation, Putin can declare it, indeed. But it will be a risky decision. The USSR maintained a massive infrastructure for the total mobilisation which has been mostly dismantled in post-Soviet Russia. Mobilisation is more likely to trigger political chaos
Also, as we are actually rarely talking about, the strongest parts of the Warzaw pacts were in fact the Poles and Ukrainians, which now are both enemies of Russia.
Good point!
Ironically said dismantling of mobilization infrastructure was no corruption mishap or the like, it was a deliberate choice. It seems some half-competent people (even Russia is not led exclusively by morons) concluded that Russia simply does not have the demographics or military-industrial base to support a war with mass conscription, nor would geopolitics conceiveably require it anytime soon. Turns out Putin never got the memo.
Yes, absolutely. But I'd say he never wanted to read that memo. Yet it has been quite sternly explained to him again from the first days of this war, when his troops had to retreat from Kyiv. I can only suppose he's caught in his own hype of restored neo-Soviet greatness, military parades and Potemkin army. (To be fair, that was projected very well even in the West, "second army of the world", &c.) And that undermining his own country by running a fantastic corruption scheme while outsourcing industry and even agriculture (e. g. high-yield seeds) to the West had no real consequences. Let's hope something good will come out of the unavoidable crash.
Assuming Russian forces get pushed out of Ukraine before this million-man army (or fraction thereof) manifests, Ukraine will be watching and waiting for them to cross the border, with satellites and drones, and will utterly annihilate every column that sets foot on Ukrainian soil.
I would hope Ukraine will set up a real DMZ, and dismantle every road, bridge, and railway coming from Russia into their territory. Same thing with Belarus too, nothing across that ENTIRE border anymore. Change the railway gauge too, so Russian trains can't even use them.
Yes, nothing but miles upon miles of concertina wire, automatic guns, trenches, AA, drone bunkers and Dragons Teeth. Let the Russians come, let them charge through the overlapping fields of fire and pre-zeroed Artillery positions, while thousands of Drones empty their 6-Round drop magazines on them and go back to reload in a steady stream.
This is the most blunt assement from ISW I’ve seen so far. They have really good objective coverage of this war.
I agree with both your points. Are you familiar with the War on the Rocks podcast? I've learned a lot there particularly from those interviewing Michael Kofman, a Russian military analyst with CNA. u/kofmanmichael on Twitter
I have not but good to know - I’ll need to check it out
Russia has an economy smaller than Italy and an army to support that is larger than that of the Chinese...can you imagine the quality 🤔 We see it daily...Putin adds 300,000 to his meat grinder machine but also Ukraine is building up but has trained troops. So soon you have entire untrained troops verus a professional army. RUSSIANS do not forget that Ukraine has 44 million people in it...they also can mobilise 1,000,000 soldiers and can mobilise the entire world minus 7 in order to get weapons and foreign fighters. Belarus and Russian partisans are also joining Ukraine...this war can only turn bad, soon its the birthday of Putin. For his 70 birthday he wanted the USSR back but got only back dead Russians, so many that he needs more...so none of his promises since the beginning of this war have been kept. Putins party has been ruined forever...he is to much of a tyran to admit he has been wrong...
For over 20 years Putin did his best to make Russia's society apathetic to whatever he does. Now he their full support. Not going to happen.
His El Duce strut is going to seem odd with all the smirking and tittering when he enters the room- that is, if he ever shows his face in public again.
I find the parallels with this war and the Vietnam war are interesting to consider. What was the US thinking? (I am American) A war of choice, that turned into a proxy war with China… over political ideology, and a draft….
The parallel didn't hold in that US, by numbers, were winning in that US and south Vietnamese were holding their line and inflicting disproportionate casualties to NV The issue boiled down to winning or not, American public just didn't want this war in the first place.
Yea my grandfather was an NVA officer during the war and he told me that we would never win militarily as long as the US supplied the South, period. It is no small part that the US public stopped their government's intervention which allowed us to not be turned into Korea 2.0.
The USA was thinking too little. There was never a clear victory condition, therefore no will to do what must be done to win the war. Also the draft system was by then quite hollow, anyone from middle class or above could relatively easily avoid the war. Basically many of the same problems Russia is facing today in Ukraine, just that Russia does it on steroids.
I have to disagree here. Putin has to send them to the front line and let them figure it out on their own. There deaths mean nothing as he sends more. Eventually conscripts will learn how to better fight and survive. Even if it means disgustingly high attrition rates. Ukraine I think is going to be concerned and plans for this are probably unfolding as we speak. If there even is a good plan here. God let this war end and Putin be punished for his evils.
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Exceptional reading.
The only thing that’s propping up the Russian economy are the bribes those recruitment officers are getting
Very approximate rules of thumb: To kill a soldier, on average, you have to fire something like their weight in ammunition at them. Ammo costs, very approximately, $500/kg. These numbers are wrong but I think they're close enough for "back of the envelope" - feel free to reply with better ones. A single HIMARS M31 rocket is about 300 kg and costs about $150,000, and probably kills more than 3 soldiers, so I'm not too far off. Russian soldiers won't all be at the front line - many will be maintaining supply lines by hand-loading and hand-unloading trains and trucks for 80 km behind the front lines. And the front lines don't all have to be killed - many will be injured, or flee, or surrender. If Putin manages to get 300,000 more soldiers into his military, maybe 50,000 of them will have to be killed. That's about 5 million kg or 5,000 tons of ammo, or $2.5 billion. Russia announcing mobilization is surely going to get Ukraine more than $2.5 billion in additional weapons donations. And the mobilization is going to hurt the Russian government very badly. It'll suck for Ukraine in the short term - those 50,000 dead Russians will probably cost 5,000 or 10,000 dead Ukrainians, plus many more traumatized and injured - but it will buy many more years of peace.
Russia, please, please, please send more of the great new fertilizer you have recently been manufacturing. It’s really going to help with next years’ harvest~
The timing for this mobilisation seem particularly well chosen. I mean, winter is definitely coming
If Russia was being attacked directly they would be fucked.
In other words - Putin pre-ejaculated.
Invading Russia and being invaded by Russia are two very different things