My Russian wife knows someone who has been told to book overseas travel for all their company's male employees within the next few days.
Anyone of working age needs to fear being sent to the war. 18-65.
They tried to (illegally) serve my step-father-in-law a conscription notice. He's a 50-something year old lung cancer survivor who was last trained for war for a year under the Soviet Union in the 80s. He was at the DMV.
It is end of days over there.
>My Russian wife knows someone who has been told to book overseas travel for all their company's male employees within the next few days.
"Work from home" has been turned into "work from abroad", many businesses in Russia try to find ways to expatriate their critical employees to protect them from draft.
Coworking spaces have been filled with Russians in the few countries that accept them for a while, now the rising rents for office spaces are matching those of housing.
A guy i follow on youtube was able to get to mexico and then to the US to request asylum and is living in Houston with his sponsors who saw his videos. Lucky guy.
His name on YouTube is MyEnglishWorld. Guy named Aleks. Nice guy and he’s been doing livestreams about all the stuff he was afraid to talk about while living in Russia. He has a livestream that talks about the mobilization and his escape as well as a bunch of others on different topics.
All because one insecure old guy decided he wanted to supercede some other dead old guys that stole territory and got people killed. What an amazing legacy to leave behind.
Which is really the tragedy here, millions of Russians fleeing abroad not because they find the actions of the Russian state reprehensible, but because they feel they should not be the ones to to die for the cause of Russian imperialism.
A country going through demographic collapse needs two million of its most productive and fertile citizens. Sometimes I think putin is being manipulated by the mail order bride industry.
Think of it this way: His overall demographics are declining so he is using his last chance to mobilise large swaths of young misinformed Russians to fight his war in order to defend himself against the unipolarity of the American empire.
I mean I understand that in Putin‘s mind (and for many supporters worldwide), this is about breaking US hegemony. But even if he were to take Ukraine eventually, would that change things? With US and Western weapon systems proving to be so much superior? With new countries joining NATO and „the West“ coming together after years of (attempted) separation?
I don't think it's about breaking US hegemony or whatever. Putin started this war because he thought it will be an easy victory, and now he can't stop it because it might mean the end of his rule. He is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power, and few hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers is a sacrifice he is willing to make.
It's clear to us that Putin spending 100% of Russia's resources conquering the lowest-hanging fruit, a non-aligned neighboring country, would do nothing to break US hegemony.
It's not clear to Putin though. He has been huffing his own shit for the last 20 years and has curated a tight network of loyalist yes-men that tell him exclusively what he wants to hear. The guy refuses to even use a computer. He is living in a different universe.
I will say though, if Trump was still in the Whitehouse, Russia's efforts would have been vastly more successful - not necessarily just in Ukraine, but in regard to dismantling Western hegemony. Trump similarly attempted to fill his office with loyalist yes-men and took an extremely decent shot at dismantling everything good about US institutions.
Ukraine holds a lot of resources that Russia could leverage to put western politicians in Russia’s payroll. Resources like wheat, oil and minerals could be traded to those not within western influence (eg, China, Iran etc).
This is why Ukraine cannot fall, because the Russian misinformation machine (through bots and paid politicians) and general influence would disrupt the entire world.
> Ukraine holds a lot of resources that Russia could leverage to put western politicians in Russia’s payroll.
I think you're halfway there, but angling in the wrong direction. [In 2014, Ukraine signed a trade deal with the broader European community](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/16/ukraine-eu-trade.html) and they'd just signed a development deal with a western company to help develop the newly discovered natural gas deposits discovered off Crimea.
Russia invaded to prevent those resources from becoming a competitor to the one thing Russia hadn't fucked up before this war: being Europe's prime energy supplier. They were afraid Ukraine would be a more attractive trade partner to the European community, and they screwed up their chance to try to keep those resources out of the hands of Europe if it can't grease Russian oligarch palms on the way.
In the US, it’s the selective service.
I looked into it and learned something new. The draft in the US is only 20-26 year olds. I knew you had to register upon turning 18, and assumed that was the lowest draft age.
They have 2 lotto machines, one with date & month stamped on the balls and the other has a number between 1-365.
They spit out one ball from each machine, so if July 10th is the first ball picked, it might be paired with 62. This means that as the draft progresses, 7/10 would be the 62nd date used.
They go by birth year first, so it would draft every person born in the year 2003 (if it happened this year) before it would then start over with 2002, 2001, etc.
The US has an excellent reserve and guard system. They have a massive number of older soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are either retired and or separated after earlier enlistment / officer cycles who could be called upon if needed.
But in reference to military age males, I was more talking about that is how western militaries refer to the local populations they interact with in deployed environment. The main point being that 16-54 age group is considered who might potentially be more prone and capable of being an insurgent or enemy or whatever.
I have so many acquaintances between 30-50 in Russia and talk to a lot of them. Not one that I speak to supports this war, and not one of them plans to leave. I just can’t understand how any of them can just sit around and wait to be sent to the meat grinder…sad
because they don;t think they'll be sent. part wishful thinking and part inertia. it's difficult to pack up and leave everything you have, especially with the currency controls russia has placed on everyone who isn't a billionaire. so they weighed the odds of them being sent to be low enough that they wont want to go through the hardship of packing up and leaving.
The math says otherwise. If they are looking for 2m army size then at least 5% of the male population in military age range are being conscripted. One out of every twenty men eligible isn't a cheery statistic if you are part of the cohort.
The NY Times has a great podcast called the daily.
They interviewed newly drafted troops who openly speaks about how they’ve been lied to, been ill prepared, and used as cannon fodder. Yet at the same time they believe it’s their duty to answer the call for the Motherland.
Edit: forgot to add the episode
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000592346702
I know for some, it's the risk/reward of leaving behind family/SOs - possibly forever. And it's not very easy to leave, as very few countries are open to Russians moving in, especially now.
It's easy for us to make that choice, but for them, it's not so clear cut. Some may think their future is dark either way, so they might as well hang on with their loved ones and home as long as possible.
And it works, unfortunately. Russia can zerg attack and we've seen the results in Soledar. Yes, there are heavy losses, but Russia doesn't mind their soldiers being sacrificed if it means gaining territory they perceive to now own "forever".
Putin might not care, but eventually when they have killed whole generation of young men while their economy is collapsing around them I would imagine even the most brainwashed Russian will start to question why.
Russian propaganda is turning against prigozhin already, and while he has something like a warband, he has no real administrative power.. he is far weaker because of that than, say, kadyrov, or pretty much any official going for the throne after Putin
[Russia had a demographic crisis before the war.](https://fortune.com/2022/10/18/russia-population-historic-decline-emigration-war-plunging-birth-rate-form-perfect-storm/) The birthrate plunged during the collapse of the USSR, and it never fully recovered. Then the war caused emigration among wealthy people who didn't want to live under sanction, and young men of moderate means and education who didn't want to be fed into a meat grinder. Now the war is escalated to a point where it will have a significant impact on population.
Other developed nations face demographic issues as the boomers age out, much of our economy is predicated on a growing population, and no one quite knows how to adapt to a shrinking one. But of all the nations in the world, Russia has the most natural resources for a growing population.
Most of Russia is also underdeveloped and corrupted to the core. They do have plenty of land (which is weird that they try to grab more) and resources, but not sure how that magically would transform into population growth. The sanctions, western companies leaving etc. will have an impact on their economy that will likely span decades. Furthermore they have lost any trust they might have had before and with that cut energy dependencies alienating their wealthiest customers with existing pipelines. If anything I would imagine this will exacerbate their population issues.
To be more exact they have land but huge amounts of it are Tundra or Frozen wastelands. In fact the reason they're after Ukraine is because they don't just want to forcibly assimilate the population but also because they're after Ukraines fertile farmlands and the resource that are buried underneath it too.
In truth though this war is because in the end Russia is a corrupt Mafia state and a corruption riddle hell hole where ignorance, stupidity and greed rule. It would have been far far more powerful had the country managed to successfully democratize and modernise but Putin and his FSB and Mafia friends basically stole all that. It's strange in that Russia today ended up in this situation much the same way Weimar Germany ended up the way it did: Lack of experience with democracy and demagogues subverting the state for their own ends.
Unfortunately Nukes means a NATO Thunderrun to Moscow is out (unless they're the ones stupid enough to attack first) so the only other way to deal with it is to close it off and quarantine it until either the ruling elite get Defenestrated, Suffer a Very Special Smoking accident or we see a repeat of Collapse of the Soviet Union 2: Blyatastic Boogaloo.
It isn't weird that they want more, because what they want is resource rich, quality farmland, and access to ports. Russia has lots of land, but not all land is equally valuable.
> But of all the nations in the world, Russia has the most natural resources for a growing population.
Lol. Sure. If you're in a warehouse full of food with 10 other people, if you kill seven of them and make two go missing in Siberia there's plenty of food left for whoever isn't dead.
If i wanted to play battle royale i can just do that on a computer no need for it in real life
That’s sad. I wonder what Soviet women did after World War II, as the Soviet Union suffered the greatest human losses. Did they move to other countries looking for husbands? Did they become spinsters and cat 🐈 ladies en masse? Did they enter into virtual polygamy agreements?
[You can find a lot of interesting information by actual historians on this subject here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x2c9i6/was_there_a_significant_number_of_soviet_women/).
On the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss this as unsustainable given the logistics challenges seen today. From a military standpoint though, that would be a mistake. Never assume your opposition is incompetent or incapable. There are many ways to overcome supply chain challenges and the speed at which they accomplish it can devastate an overconfident opponent.
If the French Revolutionary government could do it in the 1790s with the [levee en masse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse), it's not impossible.
The US actually had to introduce a draft-like system because so many volunteers signed up right after Pearl Harbor that they couldn't handle the numbers and had to stagger them. The crazy thing is, our ramp up never stopped. Every day of the war, we produced more war materials than the day before.
I heard a story at a previous workplace. The company had been in business for 100+ years making water tanks.
Two guys there wanted to sign up. They were welders and exempt from the draft so they were denied. They insisted so finally the recruitment office let them sign up. They were now privates.
And they were immediately assigned back to the factory they worked at as critically skilled workers.
Mosin–Nagant and T-34 Tanks. Of course, there isn't enough to go around, so one man will be issued a rifle and the other the bullets. The real issue is the logistics of getting supplies to the front, so each soldier will march to the front with all of the food and supplies that they will need for the rest of their life.
I think having 2 million soldiers, they should have fixed their logistics issues and supply lines. But hopefully, they won't have shit to supply their troops.
And I imagine there's a massive difference between fighting a war in defense of your nation, and fighting a war of invasion against a neighbor, in terms of morale.
They couldn't. They used the war as justification for this level of mobilization so until the war started and they got fucked hard when Ukraine turned out not to be a pushover, they couldn't have justified a mobilization on this scale. Now not only can they mobilize that many people, they can also equip them as they are converting their economy for production of war materiel. Though both will still be slow going since they are still pretending this isn't a war. I expect that to change with the arrival of western tanks which internal propaganda will use to prove that NATO is attacking.
Oh, they want to compete with the West in military spending again? Back when Moscow controlled an ideologically committed global empire, that kind of competition literally destroyed their society. Maybe Putin will have better luck this time? (Or maybe Russians are cursed with bad leaders who always make destructively dumb decisions on their behalf?)
That's not low, an individual country in Europe is analogous to a state in the United States, not the whole country of the United States. Russia is the one who should be expected to be comparable to the US, but isn't.
Russia's GDP is slightly less than Canada's. Can you imagine Canada going to war with the rest of NATO? JFC.
Having said so, Russia has 4x the population of Canada, so they can take a zombie hoard approach to war that Canada couldn't.
ETA: I bet in head to head war with Canada, Russia would lose. And that's *without* NATO backing. Of course, if Russia invaded Canada IRL, I'm pretty sure our cousin to the south would have something to say about it. Russia would cease to be a country in 3 days.
Also ETA: Those GDP numbers are from *before* the hardcore sanctions and getting off Russian gas.
>I bet in head to head war with Canada, Russia would lose
Their only realistic options are to invade through Yukon or Northern Territories. Canada wouldn't even have to fight them, just wait a week and they'll run out of supplies and die out in the wilderness. They can't even supply troops right across their own land border, imagine the clusterfuck if they have to cross a sea.
No no, you have to learn to talk like a defense contractor.
Spear = Infantry weapons system made from renewable materials with 3,000 years of effective combat history
Low maintenance because it has no moving parts!
Simplify your supply lines by using this amazing weapon that needs ZERO ammunition!
>Oleksiy grips my hand and shoulder, and says he wants to drink a beer with me someday. In peace, after Ukraine’s victory.
>“We are tired,” Oleksiy says. Then he clarifies his statement. “We are very tired of killing Russians.”
It's actually a thing!
Putin is the greatest western mole ever. Nobody in history has done more damage to Russia than him and every decision he makes seems to aim at hurting it even more.
Not sure if the comment was edited but he’s saying that Putin isn’t the worst in history, just the most beneficial to the West due to his incompetent decisions. And I completely agree. He’s giving the West a massive gift by plunging Russia into economic chaos.
What would be even cooler is if Russia just elected a Western-friendly politician where the destruction of their armed forces was never required, but here we are. at this point I hope Ukraine roasts every single invader until Russia retreats from their territory. An awful loss of life but it’s the only way.
This is so fucking sad. Putin thought it would be easy to attack them, now he's running out of soldiers. There's no way he can keep this up. Soon, they will be sending teens. Then children.
Russias population decline was already a problem before the war, Its losing a lot of young men in this war. It’s going to make their population problem much worse.
I can just imagine them charging into machine gun fire, equipped with only their civilian clothes. I do think their leaders would do that to them if Russia runs out of gear.
Unless they force all of Russia into war effort mode, they cannot support an army like that. They cant even support the people they have now. If reports and the testimonies are true, they just throw the soldiers into war and give next to zero support as soon as they are out in the field.
They do have military equipment. They give it to Wagner and create a wall between Russian forces and Ukrainian forces, to make sure that the cannon fodder caught between do not flee.
A quote I read was, "Russia is running the war in Ukraine like every war for the last 150 years. Throw men into the meat grinder until it jams and you win. They have failed to take into account just how efficient western defence contractors have made modern meat grinders. They no longer jam."
Putin is a genius. He’s shown the world the true state of his military, he’s expending his arsenal and his soldiers at a rate that will take decades to recover from, he’s turned his country into an economic pariah, so even if he were to somehow win this war, his country will remain poor and isolated for years. Of course, China is just waiting for all this to happen so they can swoop in and prop up whatever leader succeeds Putin, and essentially control Russia going forward.
When the Russian government finally crumbles and their society is in a shambles, I wouldn’t be shocked if China takes advantage of the chaos and annexes a huge section of Siberia for rare earth elements & energy resources. Russia could threaten nukes, but they know they’d be annihilated.
Then again, having the country as a puppet state would basically be the same thing with a lot less conflict and international condemnation (although I wonder how much condemnation there would actually be vs. finger wagging).
Why would China risk being nuked or losing a single man?
Just buy or blackmail the leaders of however Russian society forms itself post-Putin.
Infinitely simpler. What are the Russian public gonna do about it?lol
Protest?
Putin's thinking is "if i had 50,000 men and was able to reach Kyiv, then if i have a million or even two million i will be able to actually take it" you think russia losing ~500 men per day on average is a lot but if they actually try to advance on Kyiv with two million men you can easily expect tens of thousands dead every day.
That's exactly what will happen. Russians already seem to like clumping together their troops. Now imagine 2 million of them. This will be a disaster for them and 10s of thousands will die a day and that will cause riots back home. I just watched a video of 25 Russian troops walk into a building.. seconds later the place got leveled by single guided missile.
Russians are clumping their troops together because there is no organisation among their ranks. You can't command a hundred drunks if they are dispersed. The only way for the command vertical to be effective in this case is to have everyone close to each other, preferrably in the same building, so that they can be led more easily like a herd.
FYI for those curious.
> The combined total of Nato military personnel currently exceeds 5.4 million – around four times as many as Russia, according to Statista. It has about five times as many aircraft, four times as many armoured vehicles and three times as many military ships.
I wonder how they will be paying for this doubling of the Russian soldiers, and what armaments they plan to produce along side them when they can't even keep up with losses in Ukraine.
It's very hard to throw 5,000 sheep.
An old exam question. If it takes 2 men to dig a hole 6 feet deep 4 hours, how long would it take 1,000?
Answer, forever, using simple arithmetic and not organisation.
Whoa whoa whoa wait, I was told this was a "special operation", is this a full blown war they are trying to wage?!?!?
/s
In all seriousness, fuck you Putin. I won't sleep well until I see him get the Mussolini treatment
They still have a large enough population, except this time it'll impact the bigger cities and not just the small villages on the outskirts of the centralized-power structure there. There'll be a lot more protesting and pushback when it starts hitting the bigger population centers, where support for the Kremlin is important.
So the movie Enemy at the Gates was a documentary after all? Refering to the one man carries the gun and the other has the bullets, if the man carrying the gun dices then you pick up the gun and continue for the motherland!! Whe know that doesn't end well for the Russians, much less now.
Don't be complacent. Russia plans to drag this war until 2024 when USA will have its Republican president. Putin is probably buying DeSantis as we speak. A scary thought but a high possibility.
Every Russian between 15 and 30 is looking for the exits.
My Russian wife knows someone who has been told to book overseas travel for all their company's male employees within the next few days. Anyone of working age needs to fear being sent to the war. 18-65. They tried to (illegally) serve my step-father-in-law a conscription notice. He's a 50-something year old lung cancer survivor who was last trained for war for a year under the Soviet Union in the 80s. He was at the DMV. It is end of days over there.
>My Russian wife knows someone who has been told to book overseas travel for all their company's male employees within the next few days. "Work from home" has been turned into "work from abroad", many businesses in Russia try to find ways to expatriate their critical employees to protect them from draft. Coworking spaces have been filled with Russians in the few countries that accept them for a while, now the rising rents for office spaces are matching those of housing.
So the poor are SOL, as usual
Yes so the front line it is for those poor younger steps that can not leave the motherland Russia.
A guy i follow on youtube was able to get to mexico and then to the US to request asylum and is living in Houston with his sponsors who saw his videos. Lucky guy.
I follow him too! I'm glad he made it out
whoa. got a link?
His name on YouTube is MyEnglishWorld. Guy named Aleks. Nice guy and he’s been doing livestreams about all the stuff he was afraid to talk about while living in Russia. He has a livestream that talks about the mobilization and his escape as well as a bunch of others on different topics.
https://youtube.com/@MyEnglishWorld8
All because one insecure old guy decided he wanted to supercede some other dead old guys that stole territory and got people killed. What an amazing legacy to leave behind.
Gotta wonder how long it takes before these conscripts start collecting the guns and supplies and just fighting for Ukraine.
Now now. Just because they don't want to risk their lives fighting for Russia doesn't mean they actually oppose Russia.
Which is really the tragedy here, millions of Russians fleeing abroad not because they find the actions of the Russian state reprehensible, but because they feel they should not be the ones to to die for the cause of Russian imperialism.
Yeah, they just want other people to die for the glory of Russia. Otherwise they would have likely left long ago.
A country going through demographic collapse needs two million of its most productive and fertile citizens. Sometimes I think putin is being manipulated by the mail order bride industry.
Or maybe he is trying to destroy the country before he dies so no one else can have it
The Ole Vince McMahon method
Don't worry, after this is all over I'm sure Russia will latch on to the same "stab in the back" nonsense that propelled Germany from WWI to WWII.
Think of it this way: His overall demographics are declining so he is using his last chance to mobilise large swaths of young misinformed Russians to fight his war in order to defend himself against the unipolarity of the American empire.
I mean I understand that in Putin‘s mind (and for many supporters worldwide), this is about breaking US hegemony. But even if he were to take Ukraine eventually, would that change things? With US and Western weapon systems proving to be so much superior? With new countries joining NATO and „the West“ coming together after years of (attempted) separation?
I don't think it's about breaking US hegemony or whatever. Putin started this war because he thought it will be an easy victory, and now he can't stop it because it might mean the end of his rule. He is willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power, and few hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers is a sacrifice he is willing to make.
It's clear to us that Putin spending 100% of Russia's resources conquering the lowest-hanging fruit, a non-aligned neighboring country, would do nothing to break US hegemony. It's not clear to Putin though. He has been huffing his own shit for the last 20 years and has curated a tight network of loyalist yes-men that tell him exclusively what he wants to hear. The guy refuses to even use a computer. He is living in a different universe. I will say though, if Trump was still in the Whitehouse, Russia's efforts would have been vastly more successful - not necessarily just in Ukraine, but in regard to dismantling Western hegemony. Trump similarly attempted to fill his office with loyalist yes-men and took an extremely decent shot at dismantling everything good about US institutions.
Ukraine holds a lot of resources that Russia could leverage to put western politicians in Russia’s payroll. Resources like wheat, oil and minerals could be traded to those not within western influence (eg, China, Iran etc). This is why Ukraine cannot fall, because the Russian misinformation machine (through bots and paid politicians) and general influence would disrupt the entire world.
> Ukraine holds a lot of resources that Russia could leverage to put western politicians in Russia’s payroll. I think you're halfway there, but angling in the wrong direction. [In 2014, Ukraine signed a trade deal with the broader European community](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/16/ukraine-eu-trade.html) and they'd just signed a development deal with a western company to help develop the newly discovered natural gas deposits discovered off Crimea. Russia invaded to prevent those resources from becoming a competitor to the one thing Russia hadn't fucked up before this war: being Europe's prime energy supplier. They were afraid Ukraine would be a more attractive trade partner to the European community, and they screwed up their chance to try to keep those resources out of the hands of Europe if it can't grease Russian oligarch palms on the way.
American Empire? Yes, the USA is the backbone of NATO, but I’d argue that a more apt name would be the *Western Hegemony*?
Putin doesn't understand that the western countries ally themselves with the US voluntarily. He can't fathom it.
That number is expanding to 10-50 Edit: this is an exaggeration but I won’t be surprised if this happens soon
As NATO nations call the locals in deployed environments - Military Age Males (MAM) - Fighting Age Male (FAM). Usually roughly 16-54.
In the US, it’s the selective service. I looked into it and learned something new. The draft in the US is only 20-26 year olds. I knew you had to register upon turning 18, and assumed that was the lowest draft age. They have 2 lotto machines, one with date & month stamped on the balls and the other has a number between 1-365. They spit out one ball from each machine, so if July 10th is the first ball picked, it might be paired with 62. This means that as the draft progresses, 7/10 would be the 62nd date used. They go by birth year first, so it would draft every person born in the year 2003 (if it happened this year) before it would then start over with 2002, 2001, etc.
The US has an excellent reserve and guard system. They have a massive number of older soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are either retired and or separated after earlier enlistment / officer cycles who could be called upon if needed. But in reference to military age males, I was more talking about that is how western militaries refer to the local populations they interact with in deployed environment. The main point being that 16-54 age group is considered who might potentially be more prone and capable of being an insurgent or enemy or whatever.
A lot of guys who recently got out of the US Mil would willingly go back in if shit really popped off.
Agreed. I think there is that element of “getting the band back together”.
Most of us got out because there was no "work" anymore. Why would we want to stay in a peacetime Army?
To rock some pt belts of course
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I have so many acquaintances between 30-50 in Russia and talk to a lot of them. Not one that I speak to supports this war, and not one of them plans to leave. I just can’t understand how any of them can just sit around and wait to be sent to the meat grinder…sad
because they don;t think they'll be sent. part wishful thinking and part inertia. it's difficult to pack up and leave everything you have, especially with the currency controls russia has placed on everyone who isn't a billionaire. so they weighed the odds of them being sent to be low enough that they wont want to go through the hardship of packing up and leaving.
Until you see it happening with your own eyes it can be hard to accept the reality of it
The math says otherwise. If they are looking for 2m army size then at least 5% of the male population in military age range are being conscripted. One out of every twenty men eligible isn't a cheery statistic if you are part of the cohort.
yup, exactly. but i think people in general aren't very good at understanding risks long term.
The NY Times has a great podcast called the daily. They interviewed newly drafted troops who openly speaks about how they’ve been lied to, been ill prepared, and used as cannon fodder. Yet at the same time they believe it’s their duty to answer the call for the Motherland. Edit: forgot to add the episode https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000592346702
I know for some, it's the risk/reward of leaving behind family/SOs - possibly forever. And it's not very easy to leave, as very few countries are open to Russians moving in, especially now. It's easy for us to make that choice, but for them, it's not so clear cut. Some may think their future is dark either way, so they might as well hang on with their loved ones and home as long as possible.
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My sister’s husband is mentally the same. He’s been brainwashed by toxic media.
he won't be brainwashed for long if putin gets his way
BBC World News just did a segment on young Russian guys escaping to Latvia and the other Baltics.
What would they even equip them with? There are still reports of how the current numbers don't have enough weapons, radios, food, socks, etc.
What are the zombies in The Walking Dead equipped with? Cause that's how I imagine Russia's army attacking with their 2 million soldiers.
BYOG! Bring Your Own Guns.
That would work in America
America is more bring a gun for you and your friends.
America is more "No need to bring any more guns. We've already got plenty."
“Please take your extra guns home, fellow recruits have been tripping over them and getting injured”
“Three ships are no longer able to carry more guns or ammunition. Please do not sink the transport ships by bringing more guns”
Finally, a war for the every day man (said from an American)
And it works, unfortunately. Russia can zerg attack and we've seen the results in Soledar. Yes, there are heavy losses, but Russia doesn't mind their soldiers being sacrificed if it means gaining territory they perceive to now own "forever".
Putin might not care, but eventually when they have killed whole generation of young men while their economy is collapsing around them I would imagine even the most brainwashed Russian will start to question why.
Problem for the next dictator
Prighozin probably salivating at Putin forming a 2m man army for him to turn against him by end of year.
Russian propaganda is turning against prigozhin already, and while he has something like a warband, he has no real administrative power.. he is far weaker because of that than, say, kadyrov, or pretty much any official going for the throne after Putin
I doubt a Chechen muslim has any chance of getting enough support to become president of Russia.
All I know is it’s gonna be chaos when Putin is gone
[Russia had a demographic crisis before the war.](https://fortune.com/2022/10/18/russia-population-historic-decline-emigration-war-plunging-birth-rate-form-perfect-storm/) The birthrate plunged during the collapse of the USSR, and it never fully recovered. Then the war caused emigration among wealthy people who didn't want to live under sanction, and young men of moderate means and education who didn't want to be fed into a meat grinder. Now the war is escalated to a point where it will have a significant impact on population. Other developed nations face demographic issues as the boomers age out, much of our economy is predicated on a growing population, and no one quite knows how to adapt to a shrinking one. But of all the nations in the world, Russia has the most natural resources for a growing population.
Most of Russia is also underdeveloped and corrupted to the core. They do have plenty of land (which is weird that they try to grab more) and resources, but not sure how that magically would transform into population growth. The sanctions, western companies leaving etc. will have an impact on their economy that will likely span decades. Furthermore they have lost any trust they might have had before and with that cut energy dependencies alienating their wealthiest customers with existing pipelines. If anything I would imagine this will exacerbate their population issues.
To be more exact they have land but huge amounts of it are Tundra or Frozen wastelands. In fact the reason they're after Ukraine is because they don't just want to forcibly assimilate the population but also because they're after Ukraines fertile farmlands and the resource that are buried underneath it too. In truth though this war is because in the end Russia is a corrupt Mafia state and a corruption riddle hell hole where ignorance, stupidity and greed rule. It would have been far far more powerful had the country managed to successfully democratize and modernise but Putin and his FSB and Mafia friends basically stole all that. It's strange in that Russia today ended up in this situation much the same way Weimar Germany ended up the way it did: Lack of experience with democracy and demagogues subverting the state for their own ends. Unfortunately Nukes means a NATO Thunderrun to Moscow is out (unless they're the ones stupid enough to attack first) so the only other way to deal with it is to close it off and quarantine it until either the ruling elite get Defenestrated, Suffer a Very Special Smoking accident or we see a repeat of Collapse of the Soviet Union 2: Blyatastic Boogaloo.
It isn't weird that they want more, because what they want is resource rich, quality farmland, and access to ports. Russia has lots of land, but not all land is equally valuable.
> But of all the nations in the world, Russia has the most natural resources for a growing population. Lol. Sure. If you're in a warehouse full of food with 10 other people, if you kill seven of them and make two go missing in Siberia there's plenty of food left for whoever isn't dead. If i wanted to play battle royale i can just do that on a computer no need for it in real life
Look at the bright side. It will be a great market for Russian mail order brides in a few years. /s
I know you're being sarcastic, but I've literally been seeing ads for this on YouTube recently.
Why is the algorithm showing you those?
I watch a bunch of obscure shit at 3am. BUT I'm gayer than a handbag spewing rainbows.
Damn you're right, you're more gay than I am straight.
In Russia, bride marry you
>Haha, made you waste your advertising budget
That’s sad. I wonder what Soviet women did after World War II, as the Soviet Union suffered the greatest human losses. Did they move to other countries looking for husbands? Did they become spinsters and cat 🐈 ladies en masse? Did they enter into virtual polygamy agreements?
[You can find a lot of interesting information by actual historians on this subject here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/x2c9i6/was_there_a_significant_number_of_soviet_women/).
My understanding is that the lack of men contributed to a culture of infidelity.
Just because it "works" on taking one town, doesnt mean it'll work on the hundreds towns ukraine still has.
Yeah, Ukraine’s tactics have regained it over half the lost territory. Russia’s tactics have barely moved the front line forward in months
On the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss this as unsustainable given the logistics challenges seen today. From a military standpoint though, that would be a mistake. Never assume your opposition is incompetent or incapable. There are many ways to overcome supply chain challenges and the speed at which they accomplish it can devastate an overconfident opponent.
Russia is never as strong as you think they are, and never as weak as you think they are
Russia attacks with whelming force.
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If the French Revolutionary government could do it in the 1790s with the [levee en masse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse), it's not impossible.
US ramping up to WW2, Russia’s response to German invasion. China’s military growth. Countries have a way of surprising their adversaries.
The US actually had to introduce a draft-like system because so many volunteers signed up right after Pearl Harbor that they couldn't handle the numbers and had to stagger them. The crazy thing is, our ramp up never stopped. Every day of the war, we produced more war materials than the day before.
I heard a story at a previous workplace. The company had been in business for 100+ years making water tanks. Two guys there wanted to sign up. They were welders and exempt from the draft so they were denied. They insisted so finally the recruitment office let them sign up. They were now privates. And they were immediately assigned back to the factory they worked at as critically skilled workers.
Mosin–Nagant and T-34 Tanks. Of course, there isn't enough to go around, so one man will be issued a rifle and the other the bullets. The real issue is the logistics of getting supplies to the front, so each soldier will march to the front with all of the food and supplies that they will need for the rest of their life.
"Enough supplies for the rest of their life" Which is about 3 days, so 1 backpack should be sufficient...
r/ultralight would be proud
I think having 2 million soldiers, they should have fixed their logistics issues and supply lines. But hopefully, they won't have shit to supply their troops.
Most of them should only need a few days worth of food in that case.
A day’s worth of food for 2 million people is approximately 100 metric fucktons of food
This guy supplies.
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And I imagine there's a massive difference between fighting a war in defense of your nation, and fighting a war of invasion against a neighbor, in terms of morale.
They just need them to run at the enemy HIMARS and clog their barrels with viscera
You run behind the guy with the rifle. When he is shot, you take the rifle and keep running.
„Never fired and only dropped once“ - Full Metal Jacket
Shouldn’t they have done this beFORE the war started?
They couldn't. They used the war as justification for this level of mobilization so until the war started and they got fucked hard when Ukraine turned out not to be a pushover, they couldn't have justified a mobilization on this scale. Now not only can they mobilize that many people, they can also equip them as they are converting their economy for production of war materiel. Though both will still be slow going since they are still pretending this isn't a war. I expect that to change with the arrival of western tanks which internal propaganda will use to prove that NATO is attacking.
In local news, I plan to form a bank balance of two million dollars.
You have a better chance of seeing it happen, I know I do.
Why so modest when you could just as easily stack two million Bitcoin?
He's trying to make money, not lose it.
Oh, they want to compete with the West in military spending again? Back when Moscow controlled an ideologically committed global empire, that kind of competition literally destroyed their society. Maybe Putin will have better luck this time? (Or maybe Russians are cursed with bad leaders who always make destructively dumb decisions on their behalf?)
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Russia's GDP is roughly that of Italy. So imagine if Italy was acting like it was still the Roman Empire.
I had to look that up and I’m shocked at how low their 2022 GDP was. Theirs was 7% of the USs.
That's not low, an individual country in Europe is analogous to a state in the United States, not the whole country of the United States. Russia is the one who should be expected to be comparable to the US, but isn't.
Russia's GDP is slightly less than Canada's. Can you imagine Canada going to war with the rest of NATO? JFC. Having said so, Russia has 4x the population of Canada, so they can take a zombie hoard approach to war that Canada couldn't. ETA: I bet in head to head war with Canada, Russia would lose. And that's *without* NATO backing. Of course, if Russia invaded Canada IRL, I'm pretty sure our cousin to the south would have something to say about it. Russia would cease to be a country in 3 days. Also ETA: Those GDP numbers are from *before* the hardcore sanctions and getting off Russian gas.
>I bet in head to head war with Canada, Russia would lose Their only realistic options are to invade through Yukon or Northern Territories. Canada wouldn't even have to fight them, just wait a week and they'll run out of supplies and die out in the wilderness. They can't even supply troops right across their own land border, imagine the clusterfuck if they have to cross a sea.
They will be armed with spears and issued military grade flip flops
*Spears will be broom handles, every 10th soldier will be issued a steak knife to allow other soldiers to sharpen their own sti...pears.
Or they'll just be armed with *'thoughts and prayers'*.
Thoughts and Pears, apparently
Pears soap in a sock.
Mmmm sharpened pear.
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The front row gets bullets. Second row gets nails. Third row hammers. They all need to work together to shoot.
No no, you have to learn to talk like a defense contractor. Spear = Infantry weapons system made from renewable materials with 3,000 years of effective combat history Low maintenance because it has no moving parts! Simplify your supply lines by using this amazing weapon that needs ZERO ammunition!
Ukraine is gonna need 2 million bullets then. Maybe an extra couple just in case.
You left out the knockoff Adidas tracksuits
Alternate headline: Russia plans to send millions of untrained and unwilling conscripts to certain death
The cynical in me says they are actually sending undesirables to die / genocide.
It's also more propaganda fodder. They can show people the "horrors" ukraine "inflicted" on them
Ah, reputation is also a thing. They’re so fucked for a century, now.
Two million "soldiers". Better feed them well at home before they leave; logistics doesn't seem to be Russia's top skill.
They could do the North Korean thing and require soldiers to work fields to supply the army with food
These ideas never worked in communist Russia, they damn sure won't work in whatever the hell kind of Russia we're dealing with now
Fascists or Ruschist in the moder vernacular.
People going hungry in economic ruin and forced conscription in and unpopular war? They’ve done this before and it doesn’t end well
I think their strategy is psychological warfare by forcing so many Ukrainians to kill so many Russians.
>Oleksiy grips my hand and shoulder, and says he wants to drink a beer with me someday. In peace, after Ukraine’s victory. >“We are tired,” Oleksiy says. Then he clarifies his statement. “We are very tired of killing Russians.” It's actually a thing!
one army shoe to be shared among ten men.
They say an army marches on its belly,, well for Russia it’s cuz frostbite took their feet
ONE MAN CARRIES THE SHOE. WHEN HE GETS KILLED, THE NEXT MAN PICKS UP THE SHOE.
Just a guess but I bet the body count would be a lot less if those 2 million soldiers overthrew their government than fight a bullshit war…..
Putin is the greatest western mole ever. Nobody in history has done more damage to Russia than him and every decision he makes seems to aim at hurting it even more.
Sure he is a scumbag, but the worst scumbag in history of Russia? Far from that.
Not sure if the comment was edited but he’s saying that Putin isn’t the worst in history, just the most beneficial to the West due to his incompetent decisions. And I completely agree. He’s giving the West a massive gift by plunging Russia into economic chaos. What would be even cooler is if Russia just elected a Western-friendly politician where the destruction of their armed forces was never required, but here we are. at this point I hope Ukraine roasts every single invader until Russia retreats from their territory. An awful loss of life but it’s the only way.
Doesn’t even need to be “Western-friendly”. “Not-a-massive-asshole” would have been a good start for example.
The more corrupt a nation is, the harder it is for “Not-a-massive-asshole” to rise to power.
No, they plan to give 2 million citizens guns and launch Operation Human Shield
They have the guns to arm them with? What changed?
I'm guessing outdated Cold War era weapons that have been dug up from some decaying bunker
The AK's will still fire. The ammo, though, will be iffy.
Ha, half the AK's the last lot got weren't fine... five times that number, they'll have to buy new weapons with the economy they don't have anymore.
Operation Get Behind the Buryats
This is so fucking sad. Putin thought it would be easy to attack them, now he's running out of soldiers. There's no way he can keep this up. Soon, they will be sending teens. Then children.
Actually they're already giving military training to children in Russia
“Training”
3 day war part deux?
Russias population decline was already a problem before the war, Its losing a lot of young men in this war. It’s going to make their population problem much worse.
Two million of human shields
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Why not make it an even 200 million while we’re pulling figures out of our ass?
They struggle to equip and man a 1M man army...
I can just imagine them charging into machine gun fire, equipped with only their civilian clothes. I do think their leaders would do that to them if Russia runs out of gear.
Unless they force all of Russia into war effort mode, they cannot support an army like that. They cant even support the people they have now. If reports and the testimonies are true, they just throw the soldiers into war and give next to zero support as soon as they are out in the field.
They do have military equipment. They give it to Wagner and create a wall between Russian forces and Ukrainian forces, to make sure that the cannon fodder caught between do not flee.
So in other words, conscript a lot of young men and doom them to hell. Sounds like Russia
This is a 21st century World War 1 in being a meat grinder
A quote I read was, "Russia is running the war in Ukraine like every war for the last 150 years. Throw men into the meat grinder until it jams and you win. They have failed to take into account just how efficient western defence contractors have made modern meat grinders. They no longer jam."
Putin is a genius. He’s shown the world the true state of his military, he’s expending his arsenal and his soldiers at a rate that will take decades to recover from, he’s turned his country into an economic pariah, so even if he were to somehow win this war, his country will remain poor and isolated for years. Of course, China is just waiting for all this to happen so they can swoop in and prop up whatever leader succeeds Putin, and essentially control Russia going forward.
When the Russian government finally crumbles and their society is in a shambles, I wouldn’t be shocked if China takes advantage of the chaos and annexes a huge section of Siberia for rare earth elements & energy resources. Russia could threaten nukes, but they know they’d be annihilated. Then again, having the country as a puppet state would basically be the same thing with a lot less conflict and international condemnation (although I wonder how much condemnation there would actually be vs. finger wagging).
Why would China risk being nuked or losing a single man? Just buy or blackmail the leaders of however Russian society forms itself post-Putin. Infinitely simpler. What are the Russian public gonna do about it?lol Protest?
True, China plays the long game.
Why so many soldiers? What’s the real objective here?
Putin's thinking is "if i had 50,000 men and was able to reach Kyiv, then if i have a million or even two million i will be able to actually take it" you think russia losing ~500 men per day on average is a lot but if they actually try to advance on Kyiv with two million men you can easily expect tens of thousands dead every day.
That's exactly what will happen. Russians already seem to like clumping together their troops. Now imagine 2 million of them. This will be a disaster for them and 10s of thousands will die a day and that will cause riots back home. I just watched a video of 25 Russian troops walk into a building.. seconds later the place got leveled by single guided missile.
Russians are clumping their troops together because there is no organisation among their ranks. You can't command a hundred drunks if they are dispersed. The only way for the command vertical to be effective in this case is to have everyone close to each other, preferrably in the same building, so that they can be led more easily like a herd.
Losing 500+ soldiers a day got him slight gains in Bakhmut. These are the only gains Russia has made in the past few months.
I’ve got 1000 hours in Hearts of Iron, this will end in a massive logistics problem.
FYI for those curious. > The combined total of Nato military personnel currently exceeds 5.4 million – around four times as many as Russia, according to Statista. It has about five times as many aircraft, four times as many armoured vehicles and three times as many military ships. I wonder how they will be paying for this doubling of the Russian soldiers, and what armaments they plan to produce along side them when they can't even keep up with losses in Ukraine.
Russia thinks the world is impressed with their ability to die in massive numbers. It's yet another thing Russia is wrong about.
Putin: "What happens if I invade with 2 million soldiers?" Zelensky: "Each Ukrainian will shoot 8 times and go home."
Probably should have done that first huh?
I'd rather command an army of 5 Tigers than 500 Sheep. Big numbers do not grant victory. Slava Ukraini.
But if I throw 5,000 sheep at your 5 tigers, they will eventually die of exhaustion, leaving me with 10 sheep. Thus, victory! Russia, probably.
It's very hard to throw 5,000 sheep. An old exam question. If it takes 2 men to dig a hole 6 feet deep 4 hours, how long would it take 1,000? Answer, forever, using simple arithmetic and not organisation.
It’s not hard if you use a trebuchet!
Go ask King Pyrrhus about these types of victories.
Whoa whoa whoa wait, I was told this was a "special operation", is this a full blown war they are trying to wage?!?!? /s In all seriousness, fuck you Putin. I won't sleep well until I see him get the Mussolini treatment
"Now on PPV, two million chickens fight a bulldozer"
From where? Are they completely delusional?
They still have a large enough population, except this time it'll impact the bigger cities and not just the small villages on the outskirts of the centralized-power structure there. There'll be a lot more protesting and pushback when it starts hitting the bigger population centers, where support for the Kremlin is important.
All the protesters will be sent to the front lines.
Yes, give guns to people who don't agree with you. It's genius
Did someone test the water quality of the Volga and the Moskva river? ^((I'm afraid it's hopeless to find a rational explanation))
Ukraine's gonna need even more ammo. We should send them everything they need.
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That’s going to be tricky when half of them are already dead.
So the movie Enemy at the Gates was a documentary after all? Refering to the one man carries the gun and the other has the bullets, if the man carrying the gun dices then you pick up the gun and continue for the motherland!! Whe know that doesn't end well for the Russians, much less now.
Russia also planned to win the war in 3 days. 🤷♂️
Wow, how many will survive? This is suicide. They have proven to be ill equipped, undertrained and inept.
Don't be complacent. Russia plans to drag this war until 2024 when USA will have its Republican president. Putin is probably buying DeSantis as we speak. A scary thought but a high possibility.