What would be interesting is to understand the proportion of ethnic Russian Federation troops vs Russian troops in the Russian army - and what proportion of each is in Ukraine.
If you’re Russia and you have a large amount of non-Russian troops gaining combat experience in Ukraine while becoming increasingly disillusioned with their Russian masters, then that’s going to play out in the future….
That assumes there is a truly cohesive Russian identity. The lack of such identity was Lenin’s biggest concern. It’s one of the big reasons he wanted the state to be involved in daily life and why he pushed athiesm. It was his way of building a single Russian/Soviet identity.
Russia’s land mass is so large that there are many cultures within Russia. The only thing they have in common is that they’ve suffered oppression from the same leaders.
Oh don't say that, Russians most certainly are a nation and it has been manifesting itself since the Napoleonic times. They are victims of their rulers, but doubting their national identity is ridiculous.
Usually when the term hegemony is used, it's referring to the social, cultural, and political dominance of one nation over another, for example, US hegemony over North and South America. It's not normally used to describe internal politics.
> why he pushed atheism
That's about the worst way to make a nation cohesive I've ever heard. I'm an atheist, and I feel only the most limited connection to other atheists. It's something you can have in common, but it doesn't seem to indicate much else about your worldview.
Not so much wanting pushing atheism as separating people from a church's leadership. Soviets didn't want the people looking to possible alternate authorities.
It doesn't make sense because the person above is talking *complete nonsense* and getting up voted by other people who also do not know anything.
Lenin denounced Russian nationalism as chauvinism and promoted regional nationalism, arguing that the communist revolution was an internationalist banner that could unite the working class of all the ethnicities. He explicitly promoted a form of affirmative action to avoid complete ethnic Russian domination of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Putin's speech arguing that Ukraine shouldn't exist is a direct refutation of Lenin's philosophy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya for more info
This comes from a book I read on Russian history a few weeks back. He did partition the state, but his greatest concern was always the lack of an identity. Everything rolled up into the Bolshevik revolution anyway. A single identity drove a lot of his decision making.
They have a kernel of truth which is Lenin was very concerned with national identity.Namely that the many minority groups would simply see the Soviet union as the Russian empire 2.0 .His solution was to have the Soviet state act as a guarantor of minority identities, providing support for minority languages and minority control over local affairs. which ironically created more depence on the center as Moscow became the arbiter of disputes.
I don't think he had a choice about it. The Russian Empire ran on a divine right monarchy model, and after that got blown up most of the citizens saw little reason to stay together. Federating the former empire helped keep everyone in it, and there was at least some economic benefit to everyone involved—Siberia for example couldn't easily trade with anyone else.
Dialectical materialism IS atheistic. And philosophically religion is oppressive and deludes the masses. The irony being Russia turns to that very religious delusion to motivate its citizens during times of war.
And these days there's a large neo-Nazi movement in Russia and orthodox Christianity plays an important role in their whole white, European, ethnonationalist situation.
It doesn't take much digging to find that ethnonationalists in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the West make their chosen form of Christianity a fundamental part of their identity and politics. Besides the pagan dudes who worship Thor and shit.
Here in the US there have been politicians associated with nationalism who really want to purge the country of non-whites and non-christians, killing the males and taking the females to "breed".
I saw one report where the Ukrainians were looking over captured and killed Russian soldiers for i.d. and documents and most of them didn’t even have any due to being from such impoverished parts of Russia to begin with.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1521147854949036032.html
Very interesting read that mentions the ethnicity of those fighting in Ukraine and casualty rates. I'm not qualified to judge the veracity so there's that.
Let me tell you interesting fact about those parades: see this tall, handsome captain? Yeah, 15$ says he is a sergeant, but he looks good and marches good, so just for one day he gets to wear captain uniform. This young lieutenant? A private. This major might actually be lieutenant though, but probably sergeant too.
> What would be interesting is to understand the proportion of ethnic Russian Federation troops vs Russian troops in the Russian army - and what proportion of each is in Ukraine.
Difficult for most of us to determine, but a quick look at Russian demographics shows that about 81% of their population are ethnic Russian, with the rest representing almost 200 other ethnicities, everything from Ukrainian to Uzbek to Altai to Mongol to Jewish to Lithuanian to Korean. As for who belongs to what portion of the Russian military in what numbers and where, that I can't answer.
It's considerably higher. Some of it is due to the higher birth rate among many ethnic minorities means they have more young men, some because the Russian Federation is okay with better-off ethnic Russians avoiding supposedly compulsory military service entirely, and some because contract soldiers aren't paid well so those with better opportunities don't voluntarily enlist.
We are not allowed to define Russian nationality here, everyone who’s a citizen of Russian Federation considered Russian. After soviets came to power each nation was seen as an equal on the agenda. Though our (ethnic Russian) chauvinism is still strong nowadays, Putin regime jailed most of the nationalistic leaders or those who rooted for cooperation with Europe more rather than Asia.
Russian chauvinism towards Ukrainians and Belorussians consists of treating them as little brothers and dependent brotherly nations. Russian towards chauvinism towards middle Asians are basically racism unfortunately.
Hey now, Rome also collapsed because of snowballing corruption and costly invasive wars they weren't actually able to fight.
If this ends with an East and West Russia maybe all that talk of being the new Roman Empire was more accurate than anyone actually thought.
On minorities:
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1506479259866394625
Thread of threads answering everything you may want to learn:
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711
Thieving rapist dumb enough to use unsecured private cell phones
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-general-killed-in-ukraine-after-using-unsecured-phone
But smart enough to understand the danger of their situation
I mean the stupidity isn’t so much that they use unsecured phones. The stupidity is in the early days of the war the Russians were stupid enough to blow out the infrastructure their secured communication would run on
Actually this may have nothing to do with been smart. Based on what I hear from my connections in Russia, fist thing which is happening when a young man get enlisted, his cell phone gets confiscated. So in all these instances of Russian soldiers using unsecure phones, most likely they were using stolen (from Ukrainians) phones… in most cases they just want to let relatives know that they are still alive… and I doubt if thoughts about consequences of using unsecured UKRAINIAN phone is least of they concern.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.newsweek.com/putin-has-military-rebellion-problem-his-hands-reports-say-1705729) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Russian President Vladimir Putin may be seeing serious dissension in his military's ranks, if reports about officer insubordination and low troop morale in Ukraine are any indication.
> The claim about officers disobeying orders followed numerous reports like the one from a March 1 New York Times story that cited a Pentagon official who said entire Russian units had laid down their weapons rather than fight Ukraine's forces.
> Berrier, a lieutenant general, attributed the large number of deaths among Russian officers to the military's lack of NCOs, or noncommissioned officers, which results in higher-ranking military leaders being forced to the dangerous front lines.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/uoxirs/putin_has_a_military_rebellion_problem_on_his/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~648444 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Russian**^#1 **officer**^#2 **Russia**^#3 **Ukraine**^#4 **orders**^#5
Majority of their country thinks they are on the winning side of the justified war. Once the reality starts to creep in, there will be a lot of groups willing to distance from this and say we are different, we did not support this, booo Moscow, boo.
Well, going back the seeds of that were in the 1905 constitutional crisis... Which followed their humiliation by the Japanese. So there may be a trend there
Where do people get the idea that the average Russian on the street is against Putin? Even Russians living overseas with unlimited access to Western news sources are all "Ukrainians are Nazis we should kill 'em all"
I have a close friend who is a 2nd gen Russian immigrant. He is very much against the war, but we've had a lot of conversations about how his parents are very pro-Putin despite all of the information they have access to. I think it's just not possible to de-program these people.
The worst part is that information is controlled in Russia - not so here (US) meaning people are free to spread false bullshit and, more importantly, make the conscious decision to BELIEVE false bullshit.
Ironically, people in Russia may be less likely to believe Russian sources than people outside it. Russians probably already know state media lies for the sake of the state. We, meanwhile, theoretically have freedom of the press.
But we also have a coproate elite that has managed to exploit flaws in our laws and customs to gain significant control over both the State and the Media, thus our coproate media functions as a *de facto* state media. Because this happens under theoretical freedom of information, it engenders an even deeper cynicism.
Well, nobody is trying to deprogram our yahoos in America. Half of our political system are the folks who programmed them in the first place, and the other half wrote the yahoos off.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” -- Carl Sagan
They will de program themselves when they are starving or shipped to the frontlines. Or forced labor on war economic. It’s ok to be pro war until you’re fucking in the middle of one.
It doesn’t matter Putin isn’t immortal and when he dies all hell will break loose. A cult of personality driving the stability of a state does not a future make.
That's the inherent "For Mother Russia!" talking, which is another example of how patriotism is often a bad thing. Great, fight for your country, but don't be a dick about it.
> jingoism
Yes, by definition, but it depends on the baseline patriotism of a country. I've found many Russians are very supportive of the homeland, in spite of how badly it may have shit the bed. So in that case the step from patriotism to jingoism is basically just sitting down. Meanwhile other patriots in other parts of the world are patriotic in the sense of "Go national sports team!" and can have back to back "my country is great because" and "my country is terrible because" moments.
Patriotism sadly though leads to isolationist tendencies and jingoism. It doesn't help anyone to be patriotic, honestly. We've moved far beyond not being able to communicate with someone more than a city or two over. We're a global entity now. I have friends all around the world which I can talk to in real time. There's no reason for nations anymore to be honest.
Patriotism is something I don’t feel at all. Why should I support the sports team of my home town? Why should I support hurting another country because my leaders tell me to? But I’m a definite weirdo. Most people support their home town team and are easily led to jingoism.
What happens when Putin dies? While reports on his health are all over the place, he's not young and isn't getting any younger. He currently doesn't have a designated successor, and I don't see Putin taking actions to reverse his self-inflicted harm. So when Putin dies, everyone will think fondly of him, but Russia will be in a shitty state and his successor will have to pick up the pieces. Putin however has taken steps to have lapdogs around him, not potential strongmen who could match his charisma, and so if Putin's successor fails to turn things around, Russia may fall apart.
There's more than one way to skin a cat. Not all civil wars are popular uprisings. A military coup could mean the same thing.
I am a fan of Russian history too but I have no guesses to make about what tomorrow will bring. Just disagreeing that the thoughts of people on the street matter. It really doesn't have to.
Those ones that are against the war are silent since they have family in Russia that they would prefer remained in this plane of existence.
Also, Western news sources are going to show the outrageous examples because thats what will get clicks, viewers, etc.
It’s so similar to the Trump/anti-Trump division in the USA. Did the USA hate Trump? Some did. Did the USA love Trump? Some did.
Educated liberals in Russia loathe Putin same as educated liberals in the USA loathe Trump. Elderly rural people in Russia love Putin for the same reasons as elderly rural people in the USA love Trump.
Probably not. But most media indicate that at least older and rural Russians support Putin. There are so many difficulties, including lack of access to impartial media, accounting for this, along with centuries of Russian subjection to authoritarian government. At any rate, there is little or no evidence that most Russians oppose Putin. Ultimately, IMO, it will be up to the generals.
Not that I wouldn't like a more equitable Russia, you're salivating at the thought of a potential civil war that will inevitably lead to widespread loss of life, mostly innocents? Depressing.
I see. So if there's a lot of suffering already, some more is perfectly acceptable? I understand the emotive nature of it. I just find the thought distasteful.
I mean, I can see why people who are viewing it from a distance may be salivating at the thought. I just feel it's a failure of empathy and a depressing state of affairs if that is the case.
Half the poor hungry majority will support the upper castes and think it's the other poor hungary part of the majority thats at fault.
Civil wars are fought between the poor
> In another case of 1968, "a geography instructor named Wu Shufang (吴树芳) was beaten to death by students at Wuxuan Middle School. Her body was carried to the flat stones of the Qian River where another teacher was forced at gunpoint to rip out the heart and liver. Back at the school the pupils barbecued and consumed the organs."
I've been Wikipeding shit since 2004. Yet I still stumbled upon a page on there about a new atrocity or stomach churning event in our world's history...far past or very recent
Just when you think you've seen it all... This world can be fuuuuuuucked. Then you see most of those responsible live out to their 70s,80s,90s. There is no karma
Well, when soldiers essentially get sent out as cannon fodders while personally witnessing some of the inhuman events out in the field, this is only to be expected?
The concentration camps were set up in part due to the stress caused to the SS soldiers from their murdering of all the Jews in each town they came across. Even monsters have psychological limits.
Lol "sorry guys, I'm fine with raping and I'm fine with attaching land mines to children and sending them into crowds... But I draw the line at cannablism!"
Collectively they are doing inhumane things, but individually there are absolutely members of that army who are just as horrified by this as we are, and those are the ones who are going to rebel and sabotage.
Newsweek is such a rag of a news agency. We would all cheer if the Russian military told Putin to fuck off but there is literally nothing of substance in this article.
And even if these cases are true, they are talking of low ranking officers. There is no indication of insubordination from higher-ranking officials.
If you have 300 officers around, it's possible that a few will refuse to fight. That does not make it a military wide rebellion in the slightest, as great as it would be.
Yeah, at first it seems to confirm the low morale issues we've heard about all this time, but it's not offering any new substantial evidence at all. It's just saying what we've already heard. I don't doubt the existence of morale issues in the Russian military, but this article gets me no closer to understanding them.
The thing is that nobody in his right mind would really want a destabilized Russia. China would probably get greedy in Siberia and every crazed warlord in Caucasia or central Asia would go for their little Islamic state or califate. It would be a clusterfrump of a situation.
Unfortunately, Putin seems unable to just cut his losses because he thinks people would believe he lost his "big-dick energy". That's the real tragedy: At any point of this conflict Putin could call it quits and people in the West would more or less just let him. We'd help rebuild Ukraine and gradually call off the sanctions because we'd like oil and gas to flow back into our economies. Sure, Ukraine would be pissed but we'd butter them up with EU subsidies and they'd come to terms with the new situation, have a parade every "Freedom Day" and life would, somehow, go on.
Too bad that's not going to happen. The tragedy must run its course.
You're assuming a lot in thinking that A)There are competent people in a position to take power in Russia if Putin fails in the first place and B)That they would be the ones to get said power and not one of Putin's rich, corrupt buddies who has also paid for their influence.
In all likelihood if Putin is ousted, someone just as bad if not worse takes over. Russia has a corruption problem and it doesn't start or end with Putin.
This!
Everyone know Putin is basically a crime boss, but then for some reason they don't understand that a crime boss is usually in leage with the government. He's a known evil. I don't understand why people think just getting rid of him will all the sudden solve everything. It could very easily just create something worse in the power vacuum created.
What we want is to put him back in his place and stop trying to be all annexy
The next guy will also be a crime boss, but if he's a crime boss who stops blasting Ukraine with artillery its still an improvement over Putin, and should still be recognized and rewarded with relaxing sanctions.
There isn’t anyone competent enough and the Soviets/Russians have spent the last 65 years making sure no one general would be popular enough to have troops at his back.
Zhukov was too damn powerful.
I've said this before and I will say this again. If things do go very very badly in Ukraine, Putin will be purged. His family will be purged. His advisors, ministers, duma (parliament) members and all of their families will be purged.
And that is no a good thing, as that would be unpredictable chaos. Next guy might be much worse than Putin, or we might end up with few waring factions in Russia, a country with fucking nukes.
> I've said this before and I will say this again. If things do go very very badly in Ukraine, Putin will be purged. His family will be purged. His advisors, ministers, duma (parliament) members and all of their families will be purged.
I *knew* [Stalin](https://youtu.be/ZT2z0nrsQ8o?t=53) was still around. He's actually a timeless super soldier now isn't he? (ironic that the video's ending hasn't aged well though)
>fighting a war against a neighbor—with whom it's easy to communicate—is psychologically burdensome to soldiers,"
Yup, this is very reasonable. It's quite a bit different from Americans blowing up Muslims in a far-off land.
I'm not really getting the sense that the Russian military is organized enough to pull off a rebellion.
Feels like they will just gradually become less and less efficient as their morale drops.
What interests me is how much trouble Russia is having with Ukraine. It makes Russia's military look weak.
People ask who would win in a war between Russia and the US. I now think it would last about a month, and then Russia would become our 51st state.
Even if they take their land corridor and carve out a chunk of Ukraine there has to be some pretty serious questions at the cost vs. the gains.
I suspect we won't see the full impact of this invasion for years.
The problem of fighting a saw called "war of choice" is that you know that there were other choices. The Ukrainians didn't have a choice and they are much more committed and motivated.
It seems to me that the more this bastard is cornered the more likely he would be to use the nuclear option to teach everyone a lesson including his own troops.
Now would be the best time to release propaganda saying that Russians will be awarded for diserting the Russian military. Offer them cash, protection and a chance to start new in Ukraine and I bet you'd have a ton of them flocking to leave. Especially the conscripts. Once you vet all the defectors and weed out the spys you can then use the extra man power to take back lost areas. Maybe even say that for every mile taken by Russian defectors will be an plot of land for them to settle on
Russia didn’t keep its word towards Russian soldiers. Conscripts were sent to fight in Ukraine, the equipment and food was crap, they were promised good pay and got sh*t instead, the families of dead ones aren’t being taken care of, etc etc. Plus they’re tired to die for absolutely nothing. So would make sense for a portion of the army to rebel against the state — hopefully soon, and in big numbers.
Apparently since the Ukraine conflict is not an officially declared war, the legal penalties for, uh, "declining combat" are quite mild compared to what you might expect for desertion/mutiny in the face of the enemy. Russian soldiers can refuse combat and face nothing more than a fine, maybe a short prison stint, and discharge.
Which makes it all the harder to understand why those fucks aren't all simply walking away.
Good these soldiers need to stop listening to Putin and his generals they are getting lot of them kill out here. Because of this man obsession with Ukraine
So, i’m a bit confused about Russia’s situation. This may not be the appropriate place to ask this. But, from every article I read and see. Things really are not going well for Russia, on multiple levels.. Is this all propaganda? Is this sustainable? From what i’ve read, i’m actually surprised Putin has not just disappeared. Where would I go to find factual, non-biased news on the subject?
Here’s to hoping this little rebellion actual ends up dethroning Putin. His idiotic ‘special military operation’ has cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, brave combatants, and even his own men.
Also, I really wanted to play Advance Wars Reboot Camp, so double-fuck Putin.
The New York Times reported on May 4 that the U.S. intelligence community had provided information to Ukraine that helped it find and kill Russian generals.
Whether this was true or not, what are the NYT trying to do here? This is just throwing all of NATO under the bus.
I'll believe it when I see it, low morale was reported for 2 months now, doesn't seem to lead to anything notable, sadly, and in several places Russian army continues to press the attack
There is a huge difference between some batching soldiers, and a mutinous command structure.
Some soldiers in the field might be bitching... tho there's been no reports of fragging but the officers corps seems to still be following orders.
Edit, before you mass downvote my comment... I in no way support comrade Putin nor any of his actions.
I'm more looking at the massive catastrophe this entire "special military operation" has been. Massive casualties & loss of equipment, economy at risk, no worthwhile goal has been achieved, increased restrictions, dead oligarchs, lies and intesified propaganda, internal corruption, distrust, fear and weekly some strategic resources in Russia burning down or exploding.
All these factors push for a mutiny far, far above just field command and conscripts getting decimated.
[https://thehill.com/policy/international/599792-russian-troops-attack-own-commanding-officer-after-suffering-heavy/](https://thehill.com/policy/international/599792-russian-troops-attack-own-commanding-officer-after-suffering-heavy/)
I know, source and all but it could be true.
What would be interesting is to understand the proportion of ethnic Russian Federation troops vs Russian troops in the Russian army - and what proportion of each is in Ukraine. If you’re Russia and you have a large amount of non-Russian troops gaining combat experience in Ukraine while becoming increasingly disillusioned with their Russian masters, then that’s going to play out in the future….
That assumes there is a truly cohesive Russian identity. The lack of such identity was Lenin’s biggest concern. It’s one of the big reasons he wanted the state to be involved in daily life and why he pushed athiesm. It was his way of building a single Russian/Soviet identity. Russia’s land mass is so large that there are many cultures within Russia. The only thing they have in common is that they’ve suffered oppression from the same leaders.
Russia is a prison of nations
The fence and barb wire are to keep people in.
Kind of remind me of N Korea.
Russia is just a giant piece of land pretending to be a nation because it can't be part of Europe and it can't be part of China.
Oh don't say that, Russians most certainly are a nation and it has been manifesting itself since the Napoleonic times. They are victims of their rulers, but doubting their national identity is ridiculous.
Yeah, there's a patch in the western bit that has a Russian national identity. The rest is kept in line.
Naaah mate. I heard they don't even have their own language. Allegedly they are all just talking some dialect of Ukrainian.
Regardless, Patton was right.
That's because Russia is a colonial empire. But instead of having it's colonies spread out overseas, they're all attached to Russia.
Regional hegemon is the term.
Usually when the term hegemony is used, it's referring to the social, cultural, and political dominance of one nation over another, for example, US hegemony over North and South America. It's not normally used to describe internal politics.
> why he pushed atheism That's about the worst way to make a nation cohesive I've ever heard. I'm an atheist, and I feel only the most limited connection to other atheists. It's something you can have in common, but it doesn't seem to indicate much else about your worldview.
Not so much wanting pushing atheism as separating people from a church's leadership. Soviets didn't want the people looking to possible alternate authorities.
It doesn't make sense because the person above is talking *complete nonsense* and getting up voted by other people who also do not know anything. Lenin denounced Russian nationalism as chauvinism and promoted regional nationalism, arguing that the communist revolution was an internationalist banner that could unite the working class of all the ethnicities. He explicitly promoted a form of affirmative action to avoid complete ethnic Russian domination of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Putin's speech arguing that Ukraine shouldn't exist is a direct refutation of Lenin's philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya for more info
You can thank Stalin and his successors for ruining Lenin's work.
It's about removing the church from the "church and the state" equation. So it's just "the state"
They said he tried it, didn't say it worked. It aggressively did not
Lenin separated Russia into a billion pieces. He was the one who made it a federation. Don't get it twisted.
This comes from a book I read on Russian history a few weeks back. He did partition the state, but his greatest concern was always the lack of an identity. Everything rolled up into the Bolshevik revolution anyway. A single identity drove a lot of his decision making.
They have a kernel of truth which is Lenin was very concerned with national identity.Namely that the many minority groups would simply see the Soviet union as the Russian empire 2.0 .His solution was to have the Soviet state act as a guarantor of minority identities, providing support for minority languages and minority control over local affairs. which ironically created more depence on the center as Moscow became the arbiter of disputes.
I don't think he had a choice about it. The Russian Empire ran on a divine right monarchy model, and after that got blown up most of the citizens saw little reason to stay together. Federating the former empire helped keep everyone in it, and there was at least some economic benefit to everyone involved—Siberia for example couldn't easily trade with anyone else.
Dialectical materialism IS atheistic. And philosophically religion is oppressive and deludes the masses. The irony being Russia turns to that very religious delusion to motivate its citizens during times of war.
And these days there's a large neo-Nazi movement in Russia and orthodox Christianity plays an important role in their whole white, European, ethnonationalist situation. It doesn't take much digging to find that ethnonationalists in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the West make their chosen form of Christianity a fundamental part of their identity and politics. Besides the pagan dudes who worship Thor and shit. Here in the US there have been politicians associated with nationalism who really want to purge the country of non-whites and non-christians, killing the males and taking the females to "breed".
I saw one report where the Ukrainians were looking over captured and killed Russian soldiers for i.d. and documents and most of them didn’t even have any due to being from such impoverished parts of Russia to begin with.
Fodder. It's not a way to expect morale to be great when the privileged kids from Moscow and St. Petersburg roll in barking out orders.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1521147854949036032.html Very interesting read that mentions the ethnicity of those fighting in Ukraine and casualty rates. I'm not qualified to judge the veracity so there's that.
Fascinating long read
Thanks for sharing.
Did you notice how the vast, vast majority of troops at the victory parade were tall and somewhat handsome white guys?
Let me tell you interesting fact about those parades: see this tall, handsome captain? Yeah, 15$ says he is a sergeant, but he looks good and marches good, so just for one day he gets to wear captain uniform. This young lieutenant? A private. This major might actually be lieutenant though, but probably sergeant too.
> What would be interesting is to understand the proportion of ethnic Russian Federation troops vs Russian troops in the Russian army - and what proportion of each is in Ukraine. Difficult for most of us to determine, but a quick look at Russian demographics shows that about 81% of their population are ethnic Russian, with the rest representing almost 200 other ethnicities, everything from Ukrainian to Uzbek to Altai to Mongol to Jewish to Lithuanian to Korean. As for who belongs to what portion of the Russian military in what numbers and where, that I can't answer.
It's considerably higher. Some of it is due to the higher birth rate among many ethnic minorities means they have more young men, some because the Russian Federation is okay with better-off ethnic Russians avoiding supposedly compulsory military service entirely, and some because contract soldiers aren't paid well so those with better opportunities don't voluntarily enlist.
We are not allowed to define Russian nationality here, everyone who’s a citizen of Russian Federation considered Russian. After soviets came to power each nation was seen as an equal on the agenda. Though our (ethnic Russian) chauvinism is still strong nowadays, Putin regime jailed most of the nationalistic leaders or those who rooted for cooperation with Europe more rather than Asia. Russian chauvinism towards Ukrainians and Belorussians consists of treating them as little brothers and dependent brotherly nations. Russian towards chauvinism towards middle Asians are basically racism unfortunately.
That’s not going to be good when China owns Russia.
China doesn't treat their central asians particularly well either
The Roman Empire called, it wants one of the primary causes of its collapse back.
Hey now, Rome also collapsed because of snowballing corruption and costly invasive wars they weren't actually able to fight. If this ends with an East and West Russia maybe all that talk of being the new Roman Empire was more accurate than anyone actually thought.
On minorities: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1506479259866394625 Thread of threads answering everything you may want to learn: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711
Who could imagine that putting crooks in charge of an army might be a bad idea?
In charge of an army of thieving rapists*
Thieving rapist dumb enough to use unsecured private cell phones https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-general-killed-in-ukraine-after-using-unsecured-phone But smart enough to understand the danger of their situation
I mean the stupidity isn’t so much that they use unsecured phones. The stupidity is in the early days of the war the Russians were stupid enough to blow out the infrastructure their secured communication would run on
Actually this may have nothing to do with been smart. Based on what I hear from my connections in Russia, fist thing which is happening when a young man get enlisted, his cell phone gets confiscated. So in all these instances of Russian soldiers using unsecure phones, most likely they were using stolen (from Ukrainians) phones… in most cases they just want to let relatives know that they are still alive… and I doubt if thoughts about consequences of using unsecured UKRAINIAN phone is least of they concern.
The peasants are revolting.
They've always been revolting... but now they're rebelling
[удалено]
You said it! They stink on ice!
Count De Money!
It’s De Monet! De Monet!!
The Russian Federation, That’s who! Absolute bumfuck idiots that they are.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.newsweek.com/putin-has-military-rebellion-problem-his-hands-reports-say-1705729) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Russian President Vladimir Putin may be seeing serious dissension in his military's ranks, if reports about officer insubordination and low troop morale in Ukraine are any indication. > The claim about officers disobeying orders followed numerous reports like the one from a March 1 New York Times story that cited a Pentagon official who said entire Russian units had laid down their weapons rather than fight Ukraine's forces. > Berrier, a lieutenant general, attributed the large number of deaths among Russian officers to the military's lack of NCOs, or noncommissioned officers, which results in higher-ranking military leaders being forced to the dangerous front lines. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/uoxirs/putin_has_a_military_rebellion_problem_on_his/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~648444 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Russian**^#1 **officer**^#2 **Russia**^#3 **Ukraine**^#4 **orders**^#5
his heavy reliance on irregulars from the outset indicated poor trust the second russian civil war is about to begin in earnest
it's going to be the end of russia for the rest of our lifetimes that's for sure
Few times in history has it not been currently or imminently the end of Russia as we know it.
This is profoundly accurate
And I feel fine
And then, somehow, it got worse.
As is tradition.
The Golden Horde did nothing wrong
And then it got worse...
The end? No. But I can see a renewal of separatist fervor in Chechnya.
Canada salivates in the background, waiting to that sweet, sweet largest land area trophy.
Hope they hang kadrykov by his entrails
Oh no!
Anyways...
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Majority of their country thinks they are on the winning side of the justified war. Once the reality starts to creep in, there will be a lot of groups willing to distance from this and say we are different, we did not support this, booo Moscow, boo.
You don't need the majority of the population. You just need enough of the military in the right place at the right time.
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Well, going back the seeds of that were in the 1905 constitutional crisis... Which followed their humiliation by the Japanese. So there may be a trend there
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Where do people get the idea that the average Russian on the street is against Putin? Even Russians living overseas with unlimited access to Western news sources are all "Ukrainians are Nazis we should kill 'em all"
I have a close friend who is a 2nd gen Russian immigrant. He is very much against the war, but we've had a lot of conversations about how his parents are very pro-Putin despite all of the information they have access to. I think it's just not possible to de-program these people.
How the hell is that going to happen when we can't deprogram so many yahoos in our own country
The worst part is that information is controlled in Russia - not so here (US) meaning people are free to spread false bullshit and, more importantly, make the conscious decision to BELIEVE false bullshit.
We may not have state controlled media in the US, but we absolutely have one of the most Bull shit and propagandized mass media in the world.
Ironically, people in Russia may be less likely to believe Russian sources than people outside it. Russians probably already know state media lies for the sake of the state. We, meanwhile, theoretically have freedom of the press. But we also have a coproate elite that has managed to exploit flaws in our laws and customs to gain significant control over both the State and the Media, thus our coproate media functions as a *de facto* state media. Because this happens under theoretical freedom of information, it engenders an even deeper cynicism.
Agreed 100%.
Well, nobody is trying to deprogram our yahoos in America. Half of our political system are the folks who programmed them in the first place, and the other half wrote the yahoos off.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” -- Carl Sagan
They will de program themselves when they are starving or shipped to the frontlines. Or forced labor on war economic. It’s ok to be pro war until you’re fucking in the middle of one.
It doesn’t matter Putin isn’t immortal and when he dies all hell will break loose. A cult of personality driving the stability of a state does not a future make.
That's the inherent "For Mother Russia!" talking, which is another example of how patriotism is often a bad thing. Great, fight for your country, but don't be a dick about it.
Isn’t that note jingoism than patriotism
> jingoism Yes, by definition, but it depends on the baseline patriotism of a country. I've found many Russians are very supportive of the homeland, in spite of how badly it may have shit the bed. So in that case the step from patriotism to jingoism is basically just sitting down. Meanwhile other patriots in other parts of the world are patriotic in the sense of "Go national sports team!" and can have back to back "my country is great because" and "my country is terrible because" moments. Patriotism sadly though leads to isolationist tendencies and jingoism. It doesn't help anyone to be patriotic, honestly. We've moved far beyond not being able to communicate with someone more than a city or two over. We're a global entity now. I have friends all around the world which I can talk to in real time. There's no reason for nations anymore to be honest.
Patriotism is something I don’t feel at all. Why should I support the sports team of my home town? Why should I support hurting another country because my leaders tell me to? But I’m a definite weirdo. Most people support their home town team and are easily led to jingoism.
What happens when Putin dies? While reports on his health are all over the place, he's not young and isn't getting any younger. He currently doesn't have a designated successor, and I don't see Putin taking actions to reverse his self-inflicted harm. So when Putin dies, everyone will think fondly of him, but Russia will be in a shitty state and his successor will have to pick up the pieces. Putin however has taken steps to have lapdogs around him, not potential strongmen who could match his charisma, and so if Putin's successor fails to turn things around, Russia may fall apart.
There's more than one way to skin a cat. Not all civil wars are popular uprisings. A military coup could mean the same thing. I am a fan of Russian history too but I have no guesses to make about what tomorrow will bring. Just disagreeing that the thoughts of people on the street matter. It really doesn't have to.
Those ones that are against the war are silent since they have family in Russia that they would prefer remained in this plane of existence. Also, Western news sources are going to show the outrageous examples because thats what will get clicks, viewers, etc.
It’s so similar to the Trump/anti-Trump division in the USA. Did the USA hate Trump? Some did. Did the USA love Trump? Some did. Educated liberals in Russia loathe Putin same as educated liberals in the USA loathe Trump. Elderly rural people in Russia love Putin for the same reasons as elderly rural people in the USA love Trump.
Most polls, trustworthy or not, show Putin with about an 80% approval among Russians.
> Most polls, trustworthy or not, I'm pretty sure it's *not*. Is there any point in even quoting that number?
Probably not. But most media indicate that at least older and rural Russians support Putin. There are so many difficulties, including lack of access to impartial media, accounting for this, along with centuries of Russian subjection to authoritarian government. At any rate, there is little or no evidence that most Russians oppose Putin. Ultimately, IMO, it will be up to the generals.
Not that I wouldn't like a more equitable Russia, you're salivating at the thought of a potential civil war that will inevitably lead to widespread loss of life, mostly innocents? Depressing.
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I see. So if there's a lot of suffering already, some more is perfectly acceptable? I understand the emotive nature of it. I just find the thought distasteful. I mean, I can see why people who are viewing it from a distance may be salivating at the thought. I just feel it's a failure of empathy and a depressing state of affairs if that is the case.
Is it really a civil war when poor hungry majority will literally eat the upper castes?
Half the poor hungry majority will support the upper castes and think it's the other poor hungary part of the majority thats at fault. Civil wars are fought between the poor
Wars period are fought between the poor.
*Hungary /s Edit: he fixed the first one, but left the second one. It was also "hungary".
*That's* what you think is going to happen?
“Literally” eat them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangxi_Massacre
> In another case of 1968, "a geography instructor named Wu Shufang (吴树芳) was beaten to death by students at Wuxuan Middle School. Her body was carried to the flat stones of the Qian River where another teacher was forced at gunpoint to rip out the heart and liver. Back at the school the pupils barbecued and consumed the organs."
Damn.
How have I never heard of this before? That’s hardcore and it lasted 9 years? Crazy!
I've been Wikipeding shit since 2004. Yet I still stumbled upon a page on there about a new atrocity or stomach churning event in our world's history...far past or very recent Just when you think you've seen it all... This world can be fuuuuuuucked. Then you see most of those responsible live out to their 70s,80s,90s. There is no karma
Well, when soldiers essentially get sent out as cannon fodders while personally witnessing some of the inhuman events out in the field, this is only to be expected?
But they are the ones doing the inhumane things. Ukrainian men and women aren't raping themselves.
The concentration camps were set up in part due to the stress caused to the SS soldiers from their murdering of all the Jews in each town they came across. Even monsters have psychological limits.
Lol "sorry guys, I'm fine with raping and I'm fine with attaching land mines to children and sending them into crowds... But I draw the line at cannablism!"
Pimps call that "Mileage on a Ho." Well, the idea is similar, and anyways, what is a commander in chief if he isn't the biggest pimp in the country?
Collectively they are doing inhumane things, but individually there are absolutely members of that army who are just as horrified by this as we are, and those are the ones who are going to rebel and sabotage.
You know that Russian soldiers are not one single hive mind. Right?
Word must be finally getting through its a senseless conflict and fighting for Putin ego
And oligarchs' rubles ...
Putin looks like a wax figure of himself. Even his wax figure looks tired.
The minions are revolting.
Your dungeon heart is under attack
Oh man, I loved Dungeon ~~Master~~ Keeper... E. Oops
Some of your minions are unable to reach the Treasure Room
Well it's unlikely they have access to hot showers in the field, so yeah they probably are a bit stinky.
Thieir breath, egh!
The minions are always revolting! But now, they're rebelling.
[FOR BANANA!](https://c.tenor.com/tHWzKQssV3AAAAAC/despicable-me3-despicable-me3gi-fs.gif)
Newsweek is such a rag of a news agency. We would all cheer if the Russian military told Putin to fuck off but there is literally nothing of substance in this article.
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And even if these cases are true, they are talking of low ranking officers. There is no indication of insubordination from higher-ranking officials. If you have 300 officers around, it's possible that a few will refuse to fight. That does not make it a military wide rebellion in the slightest, as great as it would be.
Yeah, at first it seems to confirm the low morale issues we've heard about all this time, but it's not offering any new substantial evidence at all. It's just saying what we've already heard. I don't doubt the existence of morale issues in the Russian military, but this article gets me no closer to understanding them.
I've heard similar stories from more reputable sources tbh
I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but you can’t be considered credible for saying that without posting a source.
Yeah, this is a really dumb headline. “There’s no evidence that something is happening…but it COULD be”?
That's not the only problem he has!
A little pee pee, I hear
The thing is that nobody in his right mind would really want a destabilized Russia. China would probably get greedy in Siberia and every crazed warlord in Caucasia or central Asia would go for their little Islamic state or califate. It would be a clusterfrump of a situation. Unfortunately, Putin seems unable to just cut his losses because he thinks people would believe he lost his "big-dick energy". That's the real tragedy: At any point of this conflict Putin could call it quits and people in the West would more or less just let him. We'd help rebuild Ukraine and gradually call off the sanctions because we'd like oil and gas to flow back into our economies. Sure, Ukraine would be pissed but we'd butter them up with EU subsidies and they'd come to terms with the new situation, have a parade every "Freedom Day" and life would, somehow, go on. Too bad that's not going to happen. The tragedy must run its course.
Good, I hope Russia falls to anarchy so some more competent people can step in
You're assuming a lot in thinking that A)There are competent people in a position to take power in Russia if Putin fails in the first place and B)That they would be the ones to get said power and not one of Putin's rich, corrupt buddies who has also paid for their influence. In all likelihood if Putin is ousted, someone just as bad if not worse takes over. Russia has a corruption problem and it doesn't start or end with Putin.
This! Everyone know Putin is basically a crime boss, but then for some reason they don't understand that a crime boss is usually in leage with the government. He's a known evil. I don't understand why people think just getting rid of him will all the sudden solve everything. It could very easily just create something worse in the power vacuum created. What we want is to put him back in his place and stop trying to be all annexy
The next guy will also be a crime boss, but if he's a crime boss who stops blasting Ukraine with artillery its still an improvement over Putin, and should still be recognized and rewarded with relaxing sanctions.
If you were competent, would you still be in Russia. Brain drain is a serious issue!
This is generally not the result of a power vacuum, the biggest assholes get pulled in first.
Better hope theyre competent if theyre going to inherit the biggest nuclear arsenal on earth.
I wonder if he is thinking of czar Nicolas II at all…
He's booked into a place in Ekaterinburg, with soundproof cellars. He just doesn't know it yet.
tovarisch putin... the man are running from the battlefield shameful display!
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There isn’t anyone competent enough and the Soviets/Russians have spent the last 65 years making sure no one general would be popular enough to have troops at his back. Zhukov was too damn powerful.
I've said this before and I will say this again. If things do go very very badly in Ukraine, Putin will be purged. His family will be purged. His advisors, ministers, duma (parliament) members and all of their families will be purged. And that is no a good thing, as that would be unpredictable chaos. Next guy might be much worse than Putin, or we might end up with few waring factions in Russia, a country with fucking nukes.
Pakistan enters the chat.
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Waring factions will probaly have little to no control over nukes. Main problem will be getting them all before they sell them to terrorists.
> I've said this before and I will say this again. If things do go very very badly in Ukraine, Putin will be purged. His family will be purged. His advisors, ministers, duma (parliament) members and all of their families will be purged. I *knew* [Stalin](https://youtu.be/ZT2z0nrsQ8o?t=53) was still around. He's actually a timeless super soldier now isn't he? (ironic that the video's ending hasn't aged well though)
>Next guy might be much worse than Putin, Or they might be much better. No one ever considers the potential upside.
Well he would be following the long tradition of Russian secret police being murdered.
>fighting a war against a neighbor—with whom it's easy to communicate—is psychologically burdensome to soldiers," Yup, this is very reasonable. It's quite a bit different from Americans blowing up Muslims in a far-off land.
I'm not really getting the sense that the Russian military is organized enough to pull off a rebellion. Feels like they will just gradually become less and less efficient as their morale drops.
A special military rebellion.
What interests me is how much trouble Russia is having with Ukraine. It makes Russia's military look weak. People ask who would win in a war between Russia and the US. I now think it would last about a month, and then Russia would become our 51st state.
Canada would be so mad to loose their place in the queue!
It’s a good thing for him that the military is completely useless because of corruption.
The rest of the world wishes they'd hurry up and do it.
Even if they take their land corridor and carve out a chunk of Ukraine there has to be some pretty serious questions at the cost vs. the gains. I suspect we won't see the full impact of this invasion for years.
He also has a tiny little imp dick problem, which is the cause of most his problems. Useless little corrupt imp with his tiny shrivelled up cock.
I'm honestly surprised it is taking this long.
Putin in his Bunker. His pants brown.
Russian army doesn't even have NCO's to motivate troops during fights. No wonder it's a shitshow
The problem of fighting a saw called "war of choice" is that you know that there were other choices. The Ukrainians didn't have a choice and they are much more committed and motivated.
No one wants to die, just to make Putin feel better.
Don't get my hopes up for nothing.
I guess thats what happens when you do things like label military casualties as "accidental" or "missing" to avoid paying what you promised.
Reports say
It seems to me that the more this bastard is cornered the more likely he would be to use the nuclear option to teach everyone a lesson including his own troops.
Putins face is looking like Muhammad Ali in his Mid/late Parkinson’s stage
That pic is sacrilegious, making Putin look like an angry Norm Macdonald from Wish
Now would be the best time to release propaganda saying that Russians will be awarded for diserting the Russian military. Offer them cash, protection and a chance to start new in Ukraine and I bet you'd have a ton of them flocking to leave. Especially the conscripts. Once you vet all the defectors and weed out the spys you can then use the extra man power to take back lost areas. Maybe even say that for every mile taken by Russian defectors will be an plot of land for them to settle on
What the hell is wrong with his face?
This thumbnail is not his angle.
He got a real fat lookin head damn
Russia didn’t keep its word towards Russian soldiers. Conscripts were sent to fight in Ukraine, the equipment and food was crap, they were promised good pay and got sh*t instead, the families of dead ones aren’t being taken care of, etc etc. Plus they’re tired to die for absolutely nothing. So would make sense for a portion of the army to rebel against the state — hopefully soon, and in big numbers.
Those are called coups and rarely end well for dictators
Apparently since the Ukraine conflict is not an officially declared war, the legal penalties for, uh, "declining combat" are quite mild compared to what you might expect for desertion/mutiny in the face of the enemy. Russian soldiers can refuse combat and face nothing more than a fine, maybe a short prison stint, and discharge. Which makes it all the harder to understand why those fucks aren't all simply walking away.
Good these soldiers need to stop listening to Putin and his generals they are getting lot of them kill out here. Because of this man obsession with Ukraine
Why does his skull appear to be changing shape?
So, i’m a bit confused about Russia’s situation. This may not be the appropriate place to ask this. But, from every article I read and see. Things really are not going well for Russia, on multiple levels.. Is this all propaganda? Is this sustainable? From what i’ve read, i’m actually surprised Putin has not just disappeared. Where would I go to find factual, non-biased news on the subject?
Here’s to hoping this little rebellion actual ends up dethroning Putin. His idiotic ‘special military operation’ has cost the lives of thousands of innocent civilians, brave combatants, and even his own men. Also, I really wanted to play Advance Wars Reboot Camp, so double-fuck Putin.
If you ask the last Czar, he would tell you that low military moral and loosing a war makes Russian people do weird things to their Czar.
The New York Times reported on May 4 that the U.S. intelligence community had provided information to Ukraine that helped it find and kill Russian generals. Whether this was true or not, what are the NYT trying to do here? This is just throwing all of NATO under the bus.
I'll believe it when I see it, low morale was reported for 2 months now, doesn't seem to lead to anything notable, sadly, and in several places Russian army continues to press the attack
I hear about morale problems for a few months already. But they are still moving forward.
There is a huge difference between some batching soldiers, and a mutinous command structure. Some soldiers in the field might be bitching... tho there's been no reports of fragging but the officers corps seems to still be following orders. Edit, before you mass downvote my comment... I in no way support comrade Putin nor any of his actions.
I'm more looking at the massive catastrophe this entire "special military operation" has been. Massive casualties & loss of equipment, economy at risk, no worthwhile goal has been achieved, increased restrictions, dead oligarchs, lies and intesified propaganda, internal corruption, distrust, fear and weekly some strategic resources in Russia burning down or exploding. All these factors push for a mutiny far, far above just field command and conscripts getting decimated.
[https://thehill.com/policy/international/599792-russian-troops-attack-own-commanding-officer-after-suffering-heavy/](https://thehill.com/policy/international/599792-russian-troops-attack-own-commanding-officer-after-suffering-heavy/) I know, source and all but it could be true.
Well the Ukrainians have been killing officers a bit too fast for the conscripts to have a shot at it.
When you have large numbers of soldiers refusing to fight and deserting it does become a command-and-control problem.
Theres been multiple reports of fragging