-
CLICK HERE To Join Broke Straight Boys & Instantly Get Full Access To Entire Site & 3 FREE bonus sites.
Russia & Ukraine War
- Thread starter BrokeStraightBoys
- Start date
I know that the demise of the Russian economy has been predicted a few times already and that it has not materialized yet. But there is more chatter online from Russians themselves predicting that the economy will likely go bust by sometime around Christmas or very early into next year.
A few significant main economic points come into play here. The mobilization itself, even though it's being called a "partial mobilization" is wreaking havoc in all levers of the Russian economy, as well as shattering the unwritten social contract in place since the fall of the Soviet Union. The social contract has been that Russians will tolerate the authoritarianism of the regime, as well as the corruption of the government. And in return the government has more or less agreed not to interfere directly in the personal lives of ordinary citizens. Also the government has tried to deliver on an expanding economy that slowly improves the standard of living of said ordinary citizens who don't speak out against the corruption of the government and those in power.
In the West that's not a contract any of us would agree to. But this is Russia as it is today.
Absorbing the sanctions and the costs of the war in Ukraine have already put tremendous strain on the Russian economy. They have been able to hide and paper over the most negative effects for a little while with several smart short-term measures. But even so, a day of reckoning was at hand even with that status quo.
But now the mobilization itself has become an act of terror on Russian families personally. Nobody knows if they or their other male family members or friends (of just about any age) will get a knock on the door at home, an unwelcome round-up visit at their workplace, their gym, their sports facility, a restaurant, on a train, in a store, a subway, their university... Or even if they might actually be kidnapped and rounded up by recruiters while they're just out on a public street somewhere minding their own business. It was bad enough before that they knew they lived under a corrupt dictatorship. But now it must feel like their own government has waged a war on them.
As was predicted earlier, this call-up is taking young men in their prime away from their civilian jobs. There are no easy replacements for them in the workplace. It has also caused a mass exodus and a brain drain of young healthy men out of the country for those fleeing mobilization. Trying to get uniforms, weapons, tactical gear, tents and shelter for all these new recruits is not something they can capably do, or afford. Let alone give them any real training. In many ways Russia is still a third world country in its ability to pay all these recruits, have infrastructure in place to absorb them, and get them battle ready. All that money has to come directly out of the government budget. They don't have it.
I'm hearing of another instance where new soldiers (and even soldiers at the front) were asssured that they would be receiving a portion of a huge cache of 1.5 million uniforms, including socks. Then authorities had to admit that once they went to requisition these uniforms that they only existed in the inventory logs. They were nowhere to be found. If they had ever been made, they had either been stolen and sold on the black market... Or... They never existed in the first place and all the money to procure them was embezzled and stolen years probably years ago. Only a fake paper trail remained.
But anyhoo... Here's a video that goes into more economic detail.
A few significant main economic points come into play here. The mobilization itself, even though it's being called a "partial mobilization" is wreaking havoc in all levers of the Russian economy, as well as shattering the unwritten social contract in place since the fall of the Soviet Union. The social contract has been that Russians will tolerate the authoritarianism of the regime, as well as the corruption of the government. And in return the government has more or less agreed not to interfere directly in the personal lives of ordinary citizens. Also the government has tried to deliver on an expanding economy that slowly improves the standard of living of said ordinary citizens who don't speak out against the corruption of the government and those in power.
In the West that's not a contract any of us would agree to. But this is Russia as it is today.
Absorbing the sanctions and the costs of the war in Ukraine have already put tremendous strain on the Russian economy. They have been able to hide and paper over the most negative effects for a little while with several smart short-term measures. But even so, a day of reckoning was at hand even with that status quo.
But now the mobilization itself has become an act of terror on Russian families personally. Nobody knows if they or their other male family members or friends (of just about any age) will get a knock on the door at home, an unwelcome round-up visit at their workplace, their gym, their sports facility, a restaurant, on a train, in a store, a subway, their university... Or even if they might actually be kidnapped and rounded up by recruiters while they're just out on a public street somewhere minding their own business. It was bad enough before that they knew they lived under a corrupt dictatorship. But now it must feel like their own government has waged a war on them.
As was predicted earlier, this call-up is taking young men in their prime away from their civilian jobs. There are no easy replacements for them in the workplace. It has also caused a mass exodus and a brain drain of young healthy men out of the country for those fleeing mobilization. Trying to get uniforms, weapons, tactical gear, tents and shelter for all these new recruits is not something they can capably do, or afford. Let alone give them any real training. In many ways Russia is still a third world country in its ability to pay all these recruits, have infrastructure in place to absorb them, and get them battle ready. All that money has to come directly out of the government budget. They don't have it.
I'm hearing of another instance where new soldiers (and even soldiers at the front) were asssured that they would be receiving a portion of a huge cache of 1.5 million uniforms, including socks. Then authorities had to admit that once they went to requisition these uniforms that they only existed in the inventory logs. They were nowhere to be found. If they had ever been made, they had either been stolen and sold on the black market... Or... They never existed in the first place and all the money to procure them was embezzled and stolen years probably years ago. Only a fake paper trail remained.
But anyhoo... Here's a video that goes into more economic detail.
Last edited:
I'm reading form some Russian posters online who are claiming that the real number of soldiers Russia has tried to forcefully draft/mobilize is not 300,000, but 500,000. Also many Russians inside Russia are dubious of the claims by the Kremlin that they now have all the number of troops they wanted, and the mobilization of new troops is now over. Many Russians are suspicious that this is just a ploy for men to let down their guards and go back to work, go back home, and return from their places of hiding abroad.
Chances are that many men returning to airports, border areas by car or by train, can or will be swept up (drafted) and forced to join the war that they had fled the country precisely to avoid. If I was hiding abroad for fear of being mobilized, I would not return soon to Russia under the dubious declaration that all mobilization of new troops is finalized. Mobilization is not officially finalized until Putin signs a declararation to that effect. Which he has not done. And Russians are fearful and suspicious enough of their own fascist government right now, that even if Putin does sign the declaration... They should not trust that their non-drafted loved ones are safe from further non-legal mobilization. I myself think the declaration of the end of mobilization is a lie and a trick.
The fact that there may be much closer to a half million men being mobilized from the civilian economy, rather than "only" 300,000 is just further risk of harm to the economy and social harmony in the country. If the half million number is correct, then it will just speed up the eventual economic collapse and social unrest in the country.
Chances are that many men returning to airports, border areas by car or by train, can or will be swept up (drafted) and forced to join the war that they had fled the country precisely to avoid. If I was hiding abroad for fear of being mobilized, I would not return soon to Russia under the dubious declaration that all mobilization of new troops is finalized. Mobilization is not officially finalized until Putin signs a declararation to that effect. Which he has not done. And Russians are fearful and suspicious enough of their own fascist government right now, that even if Putin does sign the declaration... They should not trust that their non-drafted loved ones are safe from further non-legal mobilization. I myself think the declaration of the end of mobilization is a lie and a trick.
The fact that there may be much closer to a half million men being mobilized from the civilian economy, rather than "only" 300,000 is just further risk of harm to the economy and social harmony in the country. If the half million number is correct, then it will just speed up the eventual economic collapse and social unrest in the country.
One warning I still have ringing in my ears is a quote of Joe Scarborough's he said the very next day following the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. I don't remeber the exact quote verbatim. But a very close likeness of it is: "We're about to see the second collapse of the Soviet Union."
The more the war drags on in Ukaraine's favor... And the more Russia tries to shovel money into an imperialistic war that it does not have to spare... The more I'm convinced that Scarborough will be proven right. With their GDP tumbling and their war expenses going up and up and up, they are losing whole years of economic growth and advancement. The EU embargo of Russian natural gas will likely go into effect in the new year. (Though Hungary will likely try to get an exemption.) When all is said and done, Russia could still end up with an economy of the same size and wealth closer to the one they had in 2010. Or even before 2010. Up to 12 years (or more?) of economic growth gone in only two years or so? It's possible.
The more the war drags on in Ukaraine's favor... And the more Russia tries to shovel money into an imperialistic war that it does not have to spare... The more I'm convinced that Scarborough will be proven right. With their GDP tumbling and their war expenses going up and up and up, they are losing whole years of economic growth and advancement. The EU embargo of Russian natural gas will likely go into effect in the new year. (Though Hungary will likely try to get an exemption.) When all is said and done, Russia could still end up with an economy of the same size and wealth closer to the one they had in 2010. Or even before 2010. Up to 12 years (or more?) of economic growth gone in only two years or so? It's possible.
Last edited:
THE WEEK
Peter Weber, Senior editor
Sat, November 5, 2022 at 5:55 AM
Fleeing Russia. Illustrated | Getty Images
"Where have all the flowers gone?" asks the famous 1960s antiwar song. In Moscow today, The New York Times reports, the question is: Where have all the men gone?
The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever.
"Putin spent years racing against Russia's demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that's consigning his country's population to a historic decline," Bloomberg News reports. Here's a look at what demographer Alexei Raksha calls Russia's "perfect storm" of demographic decline:
Aleksei Ermilov, the founder of Russia's Chop-Chop barber shop empire, tells the Times you "can see the massive relocation wave more in Moscow and St. Petersburg than in other cities, partially because more people have the means to leave there."
The urban professionals who could blithely avoid thinking about the war over the summer did get a rude awakening when the Kremlin started pressing them into military service. The ranks of Moscow's "intelligentsia, who often have disposable income and passports for foreign travel," have "thinned noticeably — in restaurants, in the hipster community, and at social gatherings like dinners and parties," the Times reports. But ethnic and religious minorities in some regions have it worse.
In the remote far north of Russia and along the Mongolia border, in the regions of Sakha and Buryatia, mobilization rates are up to six times higher than in Russia's European regions, according to Yekaterina Morland at the Asians of Russia Foundation. Indigenous people in those regions were "rounded up in their villages" and enlistment officers scoured the tundra and "handed out summonses to anyone they met," Vladimir Budaev of the Free Buryatia Foundation told The Associated Press.
"The mobilization is upending families at perhaps the most fraught moment ever for Russian demographics, with the number of women of childbearing age down by about a third in the past decade" amid the country's broader population decline, Bloomberg reports. "While demographic traumas usually play out over decades, the fallout of the invasion is making the worst scenarios more likely — and much sooner than expected."
Continuing with the Ukraine war and mobilization efforts until the end of next spring would be "catastrophic" for Russia, Moscow demographer Igor Efremov tells Bloomberg. It would likely bring birth rates down to 1 million between mid-2023 and mid-2024, dropping the fertility rate to 1.2 children per woman, a low mark Russia hit only once, in the 1999-2000 period. "A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep populations stable without migration," Bloomberg adds, and currently Russia is facing "immigration outflows" and serious questions about its "ability to attract workers from abroad."
Given Russia's much larger population and less severe recent population decline, "Ukraine's position compared to Russia's is steadily eroding," and "this trend will continue at an even greater pace in the future as the gaps in fertility rates between the two countries grow wider," Stone predicts. But "core demographic factors like birth rates and migration rates," while important, "are not destiny," and Ukraine has "turned demographic decline into military rejuvenation" through alliance-building and the "sharp willingness" of Ukrainians to fight.
Moreover, if Russia succeeds in annexing significant parts of Ukraine, Putin will have succeeded in bulking up Russia's population — but he'll also be adding Ukraine's "unfavorable demographics" to his own problems, Bloomberg notes.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-catastrophic-missing-men-problem-095508987.html
Continued on next page.
Russia's 'catastrophic' missing men problem
Peter Weber, Senior editor
Sat, November 5, 2022 at 5:55 AM
Fleeing Russia. Illustrated | Getty Images
"Where have all the flowers gone?" asks the famous 1960s antiwar song. In Moscow today, The New York Times reports, the question is: Where have all the men gone?
The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin's draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever.
"Putin spent years racing against Russia's demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that's consigning his country's population to a historic decline," Bloomberg News reports. Here's a look at what demographer Alexei Raksha calls Russia's "perfect storm" of demographic decline:
So where have all the young men gone?
Putin says his recent mobilization drafted about 300,000 men, 82,000 of whom are already in Ukraine. Another 300,000 Russians are believed to have fled to other countries to avoid the draft. The Pentagon estimated in August, before Kyiv's autumn counteroffensive, that Russia had incurred about 80,000 casualties in Ukraine, including wounded troops. "I feel like we are a country of women now," Moscow resident Stanislava, 33, told the Times. "I was searching for male friends to help me move some furniture, and I realized almost all of them had left."Aleksei Ermilov, the founder of Russia's Chop-Chop barber shop empire, tells the Times you "can see the massive relocation wave more in Moscow and St. Petersburg than in other cities, partially because more people have the means to leave there."
The urban professionals who could blithely avoid thinking about the war over the summer did get a rude awakening when the Kremlin started pressing them into military service. The ranks of Moscow's "intelligentsia, who often have disposable income and passports for foreign travel," have "thinned noticeably — in restaurants, in the hipster community, and at social gatherings like dinners and parties," the Times reports. But ethnic and religious minorities in some regions have it worse.
In the remote far north of Russia and along the Mongolia border, in the regions of Sakha and Buryatia, mobilization rates are up to six times higher than in Russia's European regions, according to Yekaterina Morland at the Asians of Russia Foundation. Indigenous people in those regions were "rounded up in their villages" and enlistment officers scoured the tundra and "handed out summonses to anyone they met," Vladimir Budaev of the Free Buryatia Foundation told The Associated Press.
How has the male exodus affected Russian demography?
Russia already had a huge gender imbalance before the Ukraine invasion, dating back to massive battlefield losses in World War II, Paul Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. Results from the 2021 census are expected to show that Russia has 10.5 million more women than men, almost the same disparity as a decade ago — the double blow being that Russian men at "prime child-bearing age" are dying in Ukraine or fleeing Putin's draft, which will "further depress the already low birthrates in the Russian Federation and put the country's demographic future, already troubled, at even greater risk.""The mobilization is upending families at perhaps the most fraught moment ever for Russian demographics, with the number of women of childbearing age down by about a third in the past decade" amid the country's broader population decline, Bloomberg reports. "While demographic traumas usually play out over decades, the fallout of the invasion is making the worst scenarios more likely — and much sooner than expected."
Continuing with the Ukraine war and mobilization efforts until the end of next spring would be "catastrophic" for Russia, Moscow demographer Igor Efremov tells Bloomberg. It would likely bring birth rates down to 1 million between mid-2023 and mid-2024, dropping the fertility rate to 1.2 children per woman, a low mark Russia hit only once, in the 1999-2000 period. "A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep populations stable without migration," Bloomberg adds, and currently Russia is facing "immigration outflows" and serious questions about its "ability to attract workers from abroad."
The war is bad for Ukraine, too, right?
Yes — and like Russia, Ukraine was already hurting demographically even before the invasion, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, wrote in March. "Both Russia and Ukraine have low fertility rates, but in recent years, Russia has implemented pro-natal policies that have helped the country avoid extreme fertility declines," while Ukraine has been relatively lacking in such policies as it struggled through 15 years of war and political and economic upheaval.Given Russia's much larger population and less severe recent population decline, "Ukraine's position compared to Russia's is steadily eroding," and "this trend will continue at an even greater pace in the future as the gaps in fertility rates between the two countries grow wider," Stone predicts. But "core demographic factors like birth rates and migration rates," while important, "are not destiny," and Ukraine has "turned demographic decline into military rejuvenation" through alliance-building and the "sharp willingness" of Ukrainians to fight.
Moreover, if Russia succeeds in annexing significant parts of Ukraine, Putin will have succeeded in bulking up Russia's population — but he'll also be adding Ukraine's "unfavorable demographics" to his own problems, Bloomberg notes.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-catastrophic-missing-men-problem-095508987.html
Continued on next page.
Part 2
Might there be a Russian post-war baby boom?
It's possible. Sometimes wars "lead to higher fertility," as when "sudden bursts of conception" occur as men deploy for battle, Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. "For example, monthly birth data from the 1940s clearly shows that U.S. baby boom began not as the G.I.'s returned from war, but as they were leaving for war." After the fighting stops, he adds, "wars may trigger a surge of nationalist ideas making people susceptible to pro-natal ideas and policies, even as so-called 'replacement fertility' often leads families to 'respond' to high-casualty events by having 'replacement' children.'"In the short term, though, "it is likely that in conditions of uncertainty, many couples will postpone having children for some time until the situation stabilizes," Elena Churilova, research fellow in the Higher School Economics's International Laboratory for Population and Health, tells Bloomberg. "In 2023, we are likely to see a further decline in the birth rate."
And in the meantime, "downloads of dating apps have significantly increased in the countries to which Russian men fled," the Times reports, noting sharp rises in downloads in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. "All of the most reasonable guys are gone," said Tatiana, a 36-year-old Muscovite. "The dating pool has shrunk by at least 50 percent."
Is there any way Russia can reverse its demographic spiral?
The most likely outcome is that "Putin's war will cast a shadow on Russia for a long time to come — one growing ever darker the longer the war carries on," Goble writes. Not only will the loss of Russian men to emigration and battlefield death "leave a huge hole in Russian society," but "those Russian men who do indeed manage to return will experience enormous problems," from PTSD and other health struggles to participating in a "proliferation of crime waves similar to those that followed the Afghan and Chechen wars."The shape of "Russia's population pyramid" means "the birthrate is almost destined to decline," Brent Peabody wrote at Foreign Policy in January. Putin has said he's haunted by that fact, and "Russia's need for more people is no doubt a motivating consideration for its current aggressive posture toward Ukraine," even as "the idea that Ukrainians would sign up to be good Russians is largely delusional."
Ukrainians may not sign up to be good Russians willingly, but thousands of Ukrainian children have been spirited off to Russia to be placed in Russian "foster families," AP reports.
Ukrainian authorities say they are launching a criminal case against Russia's children's rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who said in mid-October that she herself had adopted a boy sized by Russian forces in Ukraine's bombed-out Mariupol, AP reports. U.S., British, and other Western nations sanctioned Lvova-Belova in September over allegations she masterminded the removal to Russia of more than 2,000 vulnerable children from Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
Demography, and assumptions about how nations will react to demographic changes, are not exact arts, Rhodes College
professor Jennifer Sciubba wrote at Population Reference Bureau in April. For example, "for years, one common argument in the U.S. policy community was that Russia's demographic troubles would curtail its ability to project power outside its borders."
Obviously, the "geriatric peace theory" was not a good fit for Russia, Sciubba adds. But more broadly, "population aging and contraction are such new trends that we know little about how states conduct foreign policy under these conditions, and we shouldn't expect aging states to act like aging individuals."
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-catastrophic-missing-men-problem-095508987.html
I've found an annoying thing about the new forum software. It puts a limit of posting no more than 10,000 characters per post. This particular article apparently exceeded that number. So the only way I could post it was to separate it into 2 different posts.
Here's an article speaking to an event I found out about within the last couple days on video. I'll add a litle more context that's not covered below. It is in regards to a recent battle fought on the front lines of Luhansk. It seems that a group of about 570 very newly mobilized Russian men were promised that they would be sent to a point 15 kilometers from the front. Instead, without any training, decent weapons, decent food and water... They were sent to what turned out to be a front line position. Their commanders led them there and told them to start digging trenches. (Survivors say they were only given 3 shovels.) As soon as the shelling started the commanders fled the battlefield. They were left with minimal supplies and no leadership or instruction on what to do.
Even though the men miraculously held out for 3 days...the end result was less like a battle, and more like a massacre. They were slaughtered. Out of 570 men, only 41 were left alive. With 12 of those being wounded. What happened to them should be considered a war crime in itself. A war crime perpetrated by incompetent, corrupt and cowardly Russian command against their own soldiers.
I hate war.
Even though I want the Russians to lose and the Ukrainians to win... I take no pleasure in hearing of mass deaths, casualities and people being maimed for life.
*******************************************************
Allison Quinn
Sun, November 6, 2022 at 4:25 AM
It only took a few hours after Russia’s Vladimir Putin hailed his mobilization as a sparkling success Friday for a torrent of humiliating reports to emerge that suggest the war effort has been more successful in turning the country against him than defeating mythical Nazis in Ukraine.
The most staggering contradiction to the Russian president’s boastful claims came perhaps in Kazan, where dozens of drafted troops were captured on video late Friday berating military leadership outside a collection point for the newly mobilized.
The angry crowd complained of a lack of water, food, and “rusty” rifles from the 1970s that one soldier said were too “dangerous” to even use, according to local outlets. Spectacularly, the troops were not cowed by a military officer who threatened to call in riot police.
“What kind of riot police are you trying to scare us with? We’ll call everyone we know right now, and they’ll come and we’ll pummel all of you and the riot police,” one protesting soldier yelled back.
The officer was forced to retreat as the crowd of rioting troops chanted “cocksucker,” the video shows.
By Saturday, local authorities said the issues cited by the troops had been “resolved,” according to Tatar-Inform. But outrage continued to bubble up elsewhere, including in Voronezh, where relatives of drafted troops gathered outside the local prosecutor’s office to film a video appeal to the governor pleading with him to rescue new troops from their own command.
“On the very first day, they put [the draftees] on the frontline [in Luhansk]. The command left the battlefield and fled, saying they would soon return and bring the mobilized troops their things,” one family member said in video shared by the independent outlet Verstka.
Within 40 minutes of being dumped on the battlefield, she said, the leadership had failed to return, shelling started, and “battles went on for three days.”
“They didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, and for three days held the line and didn’t run away unlike the command,” she said.
“They tell us over the phone that our sons are alive and healthy, and even fulfilling their military duty. How the hell are they alive and healthy when they were all killed there?” the mother of another soldier told Verstka.
More than 500 troops in that battalion were subsequently killed after being abandoned by the command, according to one of the surviving soldiers who spoke to the outlet.
Aleksei Agafonov told Verstka his battalion initially included 570 men—but only 29 made it out whole and another 12 were wounded after fierce fighting outside Russian-occupied Makeyevka. The massive losses were confirmed by another soldier who survived, identified as Nikolai Voronin.
“There were a lot of dead, they were lying everywhere… Their arms and legs were torn off,” Voronin said, adding that the troops had been ordered to dig trenches before all hell broke loose and many of them wound up “almost digging their own graves.”
“When it all started, the officers immediately ran away,” said Agafonov.
“On TV they show that everything is beautiful, but in reality, here in the Luhansk region, they specifically toss mobilized troops onto the frontline, and when we left there, without seeing any officers, we went back and saw that on the third line it’s only contractees and volunteers, and draftees are on the front,” he said.
Putin, at a ceremony on Red Square on Friday, had tried to paint a very different portrait of his mobilization effort, boasting that thousands of men had opted to join as volunteers, resulting in a total of 318,000 new troops, 49,000 of whom he said were already “fulfilling their duty” in military ranks.
“The number of volunteers is not going down,” he said in comments carried by RIA Novosti.
“It’s a very large number of people [mobilized]. Families, mothers, fathers, children, wives are left… Of course, the state is doing everything in order to support them,” he said.
He went on to invoke the popular Russian slogan “we don’t leave our own behind,” claiming the phrase is “not empty words” but is “how everything is happening in reality.”
The most damning rebuke to that claim came just a few hours later from a man Ukrainian intelligence identified as a soldier from Russia’s 752nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment based in occupied Donetsk—who said troops there are quite literally ordered to leave their own behind so the government can avoid paying their families the promised payouts.
The admission came in what was described by Ukrainian authorities as an intercepted phone conversation between the Russian soldier and someone back home.
“They won’t allow for the 200s to be collected,” the purported soldier said, using Russian military jargon for those killed in action. “No body, no case. Maybe [they will think the person killed] has been captured and they can hold back money from the relatives and not fucking pay. Do you understand the idea?”
Asked if he personally had seen the abandoned dead bodies, he said, “Of course.”
“They’re fucking laying everywhere and we can’t collect them,” he told his dumbstruck interlocutor, who asked in disbelief if the military command treats only the conscripts in such a manner.
“It’s that way with everyone across the board,” he said.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/command-fled-putin-own-troops-092553394.html
Even though the men miraculously held out for 3 days...the end result was less like a battle, and more like a massacre. They were slaughtered. Out of 570 men, only 41 were left alive. With 12 of those being wounded. What happened to them should be considered a war crime in itself. A war crime perpetrated by incompetent, corrupt and cowardly Russian command against their own soldiers.
I hate war.
Even though I want the Russians to lose and the Ukrainians to win... I take no pleasure in hearing of mass deaths, casualities and people being maimed for life.
*******************************************************
‘The Command Fled’: Putin’s Own Troops Keep Humiliating Him
Allison Quinn
Sun, November 6, 2022 at 4:25 AM
It only took a few hours after Russia’s Vladimir Putin hailed his mobilization as a sparkling success Friday for a torrent of humiliating reports to emerge that suggest the war effort has been more successful in turning the country against him than defeating mythical Nazis in Ukraine.
The most staggering contradiction to the Russian president’s boastful claims came perhaps in Kazan, where dozens of drafted troops were captured on video late Friday berating military leadership outside a collection point for the newly mobilized.
The angry crowd complained of a lack of water, food, and “rusty” rifles from the 1970s that one soldier said were too “dangerous” to even use, according to local outlets. Spectacularly, the troops were not cowed by a military officer who threatened to call in riot police.
“What kind of riot police are you trying to scare us with? We’ll call everyone we know right now, and they’ll come and we’ll pummel all of you and the riot police,” one protesting soldier yelled back.
The officer was forced to retreat as the crowd of rioting troops chanted “cocksucker,” the video shows.
By Saturday, local authorities said the issues cited by the troops had been “resolved,” according to Tatar-Inform. But outrage continued to bubble up elsewhere, including in Voronezh, where relatives of drafted troops gathered outside the local prosecutor’s office to film a video appeal to the governor pleading with him to rescue new troops from their own command.
“On the very first day, they put [the draftees] on the frontline [in Luhansk]. The command left the battlefield and fled, saying they would soon return and bring the mobilized troops their things,” one family member said in video shared by the independent outlet Verstka.
Within 40 minutes of being dumped on the battlefield, she said, the leadership had failed to return, shelling started, and “battles went on for three days.”
“They didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, and for three days held the line and didn’t run away unlike the command,” she said.
“They tell us over the phone that our sons are alive and healthy, and even fulfilling their military duty. How the hell are they alive and healthy when they were all killed there?” the mother of another soldier told Verstka.
More than 500 troops in that battalion were subsequently killed after being abandoned by the command, according to one of the surviving soldiers who spoke to the outlet.
Aleksei Agafonov told Verstka his battalion initially included 570 men—but only 29 made it out whole and another 12 were wounded after fierce fighting outside Russian-occupied Makeyevka. The massive losses were confirmed by another soldier who survived, identified as Nikolai Voronin.
“There were a lot of dead, they were lying everywhere… Their arms and legs were torn off,” Voronin said, adding that the troops had been ordered to dig trenches before all hell broke loose and many of them wound up “almost digging their own graves.”
“When it all started, the officers immediately ran away,” said Agafonov.
“On TV they show that everything is beautiful, but in reality, here in the Luhansk region, they specifically toss mobilized troops onto the frontline, and when we left there, without seeing any officers, we went back and saw that on the third line it’s only contractees and volunteers, and draftees are on the front,” he said.
Putin, at a ceremony on Red Square on Friday, had tried to paint a very different portrait of his mobilization effort, boasting that thousands of men had opted to join as volunteers, resulting in a total of 318,000 new troops, 49,000 of whom he said were already “fulfilling their duty” in military ranks.
“The number of volunteers is not going down,” he said in comments carried by RIA Novosti.
“It’s a very large number of people [mobilized]. Families, mothers, fathers, children, wives are left… Of course, the state is doing everything in order to support them,” he said.
He went on to invoke the popular Russian slogan “we don’t leave our own behind,” claiming the phrase is “not empty words” but is “how everything is happening in reality.”
The most damning rebuke to that claim came just a few hours later from a man Ukrainian intelligence identified as a soldier from Russia’s 752nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment based in occupied Donetsk—who said troops there are quite literally ordered to leave their own behind so the government can avoid paying their families the promised payouts.
The admission came in what was described by Ukrainian authorities as an intercepted phone conversation between the Russian soldier and someone back home.
“They won’t allow for the 200s to be collected,” the purported soldier said, using Russian military jargon for those killed in action. “No body, no case. Maybe [they will think the person killed] has been captured and they can hold back money from the relatives and not fucking pay. Do you understand the idea?”
Asked if he personally had seen the abandoned dead bodies, he said, “Of course.”
“They’re fucking laying everywhere and we can’t collect them,” he told his dumbstruck interlocutor, who asked in disbelief if the military command treats only the conscripts in such a manner.
“It’s that way with everyone across the board,” he said.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/command-fled-putin-own-troops-092553394.html
Last edited:
Yeah. The puppet master still lives on in power.
Throwing massive waves of men and bodies at their enemies has been a Russian practice for centuries. With a large population Russia does treat its soldiers as cannon fodder or to otherwise be put into the meat grinder. They wear their enemies down (and deplete their enemies' ammunition, fuel and other resources) with the sheer numbers and human waves of Russian troops. Maybe in the 21st century the Russian soldiers won't indefinitely tolerate being treated by their own leadership like they're disposable.
Throwing massive waves of men and bodies at their enemies has been a Russian practice for centuries. With a large population Russia does treat its soldiers as cannon fodder or to otherwise be put into the meat grinder. They wear their enemies down (and deplete their enemies' ammunition, fuel and other resources) with the sheer numbers and human waves of Russian troops. Maybe in the 21st century the Russian soldiers won't indefinitely tolerate being treated by their own leadership like they're disposable.
Opinion: Putin can cling on to power, but his legend is dead
Opinion by Mark Galeotti
Updated 8:11 AM EST, Fri November 11, 2022
Editor’s Note: Mark Galeotti is the executive director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and an honorary professor at University College London. He is the author of several books on Russian history, most recently “Putin’s Wars: from Chechnya to Ukraine.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN — Despite some frenzied speculation around Russia’s loss of the occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson this week, it is still too soon to predict when and how President Vladimir Putin will surrender power – whether it will be because he is ousted, retires or simply dies in office.
However, what we can already see are some of the processes which may shape and prompt that departure. More to the point, even clinging on to power, Putin will never live up to the image he had created for himself.
Especially in the early months of the war, there was much excited speculation about his health, with claims that he had everything from blood cancer to Parkinson’s. Much of this has subsided, especially as the puffy aspect and odd twitches that were fastened upon as proof seem to have passed.
It was unsurprising that this would attract such interest, offering something of a deus ex machina for Western governments eager for a quick solution to the dilemmas of the conflict.
However, according to US intelligence officers who have studied the question, while Putin may well have recurring health issues – he has long been known to suffer from back problems and may even be suffering from a condition that has compromised his immune system, explaining the extreme measures taken to shield him from Covid-19 – there is no sign of anything likely to lead to his imminent death or incapacity.
Yet he is 70, and his health really has become an existential question for the system. After all, while the Russian constitution stipulates what happens if he dies in office – the prime minister steps in as interim president until early elections can be held – there is no provision in case he is incapacitated for any substantial length of time, nor is there a vice president able to stand in for him.
This is exactly the kind of political crisis which might generate an intra-elite struggle, which could bring down this regime.
After all, for now, the chances of a palace coup are scarcely greater than those of Putin being toppled by protests in the streets. Multiple security forces balance each other: in Moscow, for example, the military garrison, a special division of the National Guard and the Kremlin Regiment, all report to different chains of command. The Federal Security Service watches all three – and the Federal Protection Service in turn watch them.
So long as Putin is able to control the heads of these so-called “power ministries” and they command the loyalties of their agencies, he seems hard to topple.
However, for all he looks firmly in control, what is happening is that his system is becoming increasingly brittle, losing the resources which in the past have provided the resilience to respond to unexpected challenges.
Obviously, this means financial resources. As sanctions bite and the costs of war escalate, money is getting tighter. Almost a third of the 2023 budget (more than 9 trillion out of a total 29 trillion rubles) will go towards defense and security. This leaves proportionately less to support regional budgets and keep struggling industries afloat.
However, it also means weakened legitimacy and the goodwill of the security services and local elites. Putin’s approval ratings have always been artificially high, given that there is no meaningful opposition for him to be measured against, but they are nonetheless falling.
"Putin’s military machine is broken; his country’s economy so scarred that it will take years to recover; his reputation as a geopolitical mastermind in tatters."
The National Guard, the key force charged with controlling protests in the streets, has been decimated fighting in Ukraine. Members of the National Guard are also angry that they were used as cannon fodder in a war for which glorified riot police were neither trained nor equipped.
Meanwhile, while the grumbling within the elite remains carefully muted, it is evident. Just as he did during Covid-19, Putin is dumping the hard and unpopular work of raising “volunteer battalions” and keeping the war economy running onto his regional mayors and governors. While some, like St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov, have seized this as an opportunity to court Putin’s approval, many others are quietly appalled.
All this makes predicting the future of Putin and his regime even more difficult. Even brittle and stagnating regimes can hold on for a long time. Tsarist Russia was arguably brain-dead by 1911, when the brutally reformist Prime Minister Petr Stolypin was assassinated, but it still lasted through three years of catastrophe in the First World War before crumbling in 1917.
However, it does mean that Putin’s state is much less capable of dealing with the kind of unexpected crises that are at once hard to predict and yet ultimately inevitable. This could be anything from generalized rout in Ukraine to a cascading regional economic collapse at home, the security forces refusing to suppress protests on the streets or Putin falling seriously ill.
In these circumstances, as in March 1917 (February by the old Russian calendar), perhaps the commander-in-chief will be confronted by his senior generals and politicians and induced to step down for the good of the Motherland.
It seems hard at present to imagine such a scenario, but in the main the Russian elite, political and military alike, are not ‘Putinists’ but ruthless opportunists. They have supported Putin because it is in their interests; they continue to stay loyal because the risks in opposing him for now very much seem greater.
However, if they start to believe that he is vulnerable, they will likely distance themselves from him at speed. No one wants to be the last loyalist of a doomed regime.
Whatever happens, though, Putin’s dreams of establishing Russia as a great power on the back of its military strength are over, and so too are his ambitions of securing a legacy as one of the nation’s great state-builders.
His military machine is broken; his country’s economy so scarred that it will take years to recover; his reputation as a geopolitical mastermind in tatters. Putin-the-man may still cling to power for years, but Putin-the-legend is dead.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/11/opinions/after-putin-power-health-regime-galeotti/index.html
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/HUYQAABYZBDS3EU3VJKACB32UU.JPG)
Vladimir Putin ‘fighting for his life’ after Kherson retreat
Reeling from setbacks in Ukraine, pressure mounts on Russian leader.
www.nzherald.co.nz
That's a great article Br. Thnaks for sharing.
I have been trying to link different YT vids in this thread at various times. With the newer forum technology I am more often than not lately getting blank boxes that say, "This video Is Unavailable." In any case the video I tried to put in here is called, "How War In Ukraine Is Destroying Russia." I encourage you to look it up, as it goes into detail explaining why the demographics of Russia are such that Putin decided that he had to launch his wars of conquest in Eastern Europe now...while he still had a reasonably large pool of able bodied young men to draw on from the population. Because that will not be the case in another 10 years or so going forward.
Putin wants (wanted?) to rebuild the Soviet empire in Europe to the greatest extent possible through brinksmanship, without actually causing a nuclear WW III. The most obvious place to start with was Ukraine. Ukraine's Soviet past and extremely fertile and legendary black soil makes it the perfect breadbasket (and fresh pool of population) of a future Russia. Next would be the rebellious pro-Russian eastern Moldovan border enclave of Transnistria. Followed by the conquest and absorption of all of Moldova proper. Next would be trying to take over the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. (Even though they are NATO members.) He definitely wants a land bridge linking the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to Mother Russia. And you can't do that without going through at least the two countries of Lativa and Lithuania. Even possibly Poland after that?
Regardless, those were Putin's most obvious plans for the army he had paid a fortune to build up. But now he finds probably 80% of his once vaunted and globally feared army bogged down in a war of attrition in Ukraine. And for now at least it would appear that his mauled army is on the losing side of being attrited.
The other scuttlebutt I'm hearing and reading from pundits inside Russia itself are speculations and fears that the mobilization will continue and possibly resume in earnest over the next few months. They're fearing that not only was the 300,000 men number an underestimation of how many men were actually being mobilized... They fear that the mobilization is still covertly continuing. Their other big fear is that another wider mobilization of up to another million men (or up to 5 Million(!) more) may be called up early into next year.
Russia definitely needs many more bodies at the front to stave off an utterly humiliating rout. The problem of course is that they couldn't properly pay, feed, clothe, equip, train and otherwise supply the 80,000 man army they already had in Ukraine. So adding exponentially more men to these glaring pre-existing problems just depletes and bankrupts the national budget and overall economy at an even faster rate.
I have been trying to link different YT vids in this thread at various times. With the newer forum technology I am more often than not lately getting blank boxes that say, "This video Is Unavailable." In any case the video I tried to put in here is called, "How War In Ukraine Is Destroying Russia." I encourage you to look it up, as it goes into detail explaining why the demographics of Russia are such that Putin decided that he had to launch his wars of conquest in Eastern Europe now...while he still had a reasonably large pool of able bodied young men to draw on from the population. Because that will not be the case in another 10 years or so going forward.
Putin wants (wanted?) to rebuild the Soviet empire in Europe to the greatest extent possible through brinksmanship, without actually causing a nuclear WW III. The most obvious place to start with was Ukraine. Ukraine's Soviet past and extremely fertile and legendary black soil makes it the perfect breadbasket (and fresh pool of population) of a future Russia. Next would be the rebellious pro-Russian eastern Moldovan border enclave of Transnistria. Followed by the conquest and absorption of all of Moldova proper. Next would be trying to take over the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. (Even though they are NATO members.) He definitely wants a land bridge linking the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to Mother Russia. And you can't do that without going through at least the two countries of Lativa and Lithuania. Even possibly Poland after that?
Regardless, those were Putin's most obvious plans for the army he had paid a fortune to build up. But now he finds probably 80% of his once vaunted and globally feared army bogged down in a war of attrition in Ukraine. And for now at least it would appear that his mauled army is on the losing side of being attrited.
The other scuttlebutt I'm hearing and reading from pundits inside Russia itself are speculations and fears that the mobilization will continue and possibly resume in earnest over the next few months. They're fearing that not only was the 300,000 men number an underestimation of how many men were actually being mobilized... They fear that the mobilization is still covertly continuing. Their other big fear is that another wider mobilization of up to another million men (or up to 5 Million(!) more) may be called up early into next year.
Russia definitely needs many more bodies at the front to stave off an utterly humiliating rout. The problem of course is that they couldn't properly pay, feed, clothe, equip, train and otherwise supply the 80,000 man army they already had in Ukraine. So adding exponentially more men to these glaring pre-existing problems just depletes and bankrupts the national budget and overall economy at an even faster rate.
Last edited:
juanjo
BSB Addict
Russia has a number of serious problems, many of which can be directly connected to Putin and his Kepto-Oligarch buddies. There is a gentleman out of Australia named Perun who has a Youtube channel on which he has done a number of deep dives into the various issues underlying the situation we see in Russia and Ukraine at present. Caspian Report is another well-researched, long-standing Youtube channel that has addressed issues within the Russian sphere of interest, among other topics. Institute for the Study of War, a bunch of former military and consultants for the military also has a constant analysis of what is going on in Ukraine. There are others as well but these guys are the ones I always keep my eye on when they post something because they have good track records and they are pretty good about separating the bullshit tossed out by one side or the other to disguise what is going on.
In a very broad stroke, the significant issues for Russia are
There are only 144 million people in the Russian Federation. Their birthrate is extremely low and the number of prime military-age citizens is low. These are also the people they need to work in the fields and work in industry.
Russia has always been a country where the rule of law is secondary to the rule of patronage and personal power. For example, most of the children of the ruling elite and the economic elite are educated and often live and work in the EU or the US, at least until it is needful that they return home to take over the family business. These privileged people are not bothered by mere law and regulation in their day-to-day affairs. They were not when the Czars were in power. They were not when they were the ruling elite of the old USSR. And they certainly are not now under Putin. So long as they do not question the system or criticize the ruler, all is good.
Russia has always run on bullshit and corruption. To get ahead, one must always ensure that one never admits to a mistake, ever. Just as in the USSR, the collective farms always exceeded their quotas on grain or veggies, or whatever, and in every quarter, the tractor factory turned out more tractors than the previous quarter, in the new Russia, the government bureaucracy both in the military and civilian structure functions the same. And at every level, a little falls off the back of the truck and into someone's pocket.
So, for example, when Putin spent billions to revamp the military, much of that money never left his own hand - it built him a luxury dacha on the shores of the Black Sea and paid for his children's very expensive education at elite schools in Belgium and the Netherlands. His immediate military staff took their cut and at each level, a little more was cut out. If that meant that those ten thousand tanks all parked in storage lots did not receive proper maintenance or were not fitted with the latest reactive armor, oh well. If it means that the twice-yearly conscripts doing their year of military service at age 18 never saw a rifle, much less took it to a firing range and practiced shooting it, so be it. There was plenty of work for them to do building the colonel's new garage or his dacha outside of town.
And, of course, the FSB allocated hundreds of millions to recruit sympathetic politicians and military personnel in Ukraine. To develop "patriotic" civilian groups who would say nice things about Russia.
Come February 2022 and Putin is told there is a crack fighting force ready and willing to go into Ukraine and take down the civilian leadership within 24 hours. He is told there are thousands of sympathetic Ukrainian military and civilian folks who will happily welcome their Russian friends with flags and flowers. He is told there are hundreds of tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, and all manner of necessary equipment ready to be used. He is told that the country will fall into their hands with virtually no fighting at all and be completely occupied within a week at most.
He orders the invasion and we all saw the results. A 40-mile-long convoy ran out of fuel and was stuck because they did not have functioning tanker trucks to supply fuel to the vehicles. The elite troops who flew into the airfield north of Kyiv were shot up badly and their promised relief forces never arrived because they were in that convoy. Tanks ran out of fuel and were stuck along the side of the road. Except for a few Ukrainian officers who were co-opted in the southern part of the country, the Ukrainian Army fought back and so did the people.
Even now, the Russians have troops without winter gear in the field in Ukraine, without food, without proper weapons, and without adequate food. The other issue for the Russians is that they still fight the way they always have fought. The soldiers on the ground are not allowed to use their own initiative. The generals at the top draw up detailed plans and those are communicated down to the field level. But no one at the field level can alter the plan. So, if it is based on incorrect facts or the reality on the ground has changed significantly without the guys at the top knowing it, the field-level folks have to communicate up the command line for different orders. And that is where that who always BS comes into play. Lieutenant S is not going to communicate to Captain V that his plan is shit. The Lieutenant is going to say they have achieved their goals. The good captain is going to embellish that a tad to make himself look when he sends the report to the colonel and the colonel is going to do the same when he informs the general.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the twenty-man squads the Russians have sent out to hold a village now have 6 effective soldiers left out of the twenty and they are under constant bombardment by the Ukrainians.
This is why we have seen the Russians screw up constantly, losing men and equipment in actions that from a western military viewpoint seem absurd. The problem for the Russians is that they are fighting highly motivated Ukrainian soldiers who have western training, western gear, and who really do not want to be part of the Russian Federation. These are not undisciplined, poorly trained peasants in Syria armed with RPGs and old AKs.
The reality is that Putin lost the war by the end of the second week of the invasion. If his goals were to push NATO back farther from the Russian borders, install a government friendly to him in Kyiv, and flummox the West, he has lost completely. He is sitting on some Ukrainian land but there is a big difference between taking land and holding land. He is learning that now. He has lost half of what he had originally taken. He had destroyed about 80% of his combat-effective, trained troops that existed at the start of this war. He is the leader of the most sanctioned country in the world and his economy is about ready to collapse. He cannot replace the high-end military toys he had at the start of the war and he is using old equipment from back in the 1960s.
The best he could hope for right now is to hold onto what he is sitting on now. It looks like the Ukrainians are not willing to let that happen and in fact, they seem quite intent on rolling right on down into Crimea and the occupied areas of the Donbas.
In a very broad stroke, the significant issues for Russia are
There are only 144 million people in the Russian Federation. Their birthrate is extremely low and the number of prime military-age citizens is low. These are also the people they need to work in the fields and work in industry.
Russia has always been a country where the rule of law is secondary to the rule of patronage and personal power. For example, most of the children of the ruling elite and the economic elite are educated and often live and work in the EU or the US, at least until it is needful that they return home to take over the family business. These privileged people are not bothered by mere law and regulation in their day-to-day affairs. They were not when the Czars were in power. They were not when they were the ruling elite of the old USSR. And they certainly are not now under Putin. So long as they do not question the system or criticize the ruler, all is good.
Russia has always run on bullshit and corruption. To get ahead, one must always ensure that one never admits to a mistake, ever. Just as in the USSR, the collective farms always exceeded their quotas on grain or veggies, or whatever, and in every quarter, the tractor factory turned out more tractors than the previous quarter, in the new Russia, the government bureaucracy both in the military and civilian structure functions the same. And at every level, a little falls off the back of the truck and into someone's pocket.
So, for example, when Putin spent billions to revamp the military, much of that money never left his own hand - it built him a luxury dacha on the shores of the Black Sea and paid for his children's very expensive education at elite schools in Belgium and the Netherlands. His immediate military staff took their cut and at each level, a little more was cut out. If that meant that those ten thousand tanks all parked in storage lots did not receive proper maintenance or were not fitted with the latest reactive armor, oh well. If it means that the twice-yearly conscripts doing their year of military service at age 18 never saw a rifle, much less took it to a firing range and practiced shooting it, so be it. There was plenty of work for them to do building the colonel's new garage or his dacha outside of town.
And, of course, the FSB allocated hundreds of millions to recruit sympathetic politicians and military personnel in Ukraine. To develop "patriotic" civilian groups who would say nice things about Russia.
Come February 2022 and Putin is told there is a crack fighting force ready and willing to go into Ukraine and take down the civilian leadership within 24 hours. He is told there are thousands of sympathetic Ukrainian military and civilian folks who will happily welcome their Russian friends with flags and flowers. He is told there are hundreds of tanks, trucks, artillery pieces, and all manner of necessary equipment ready to be used. He is told that the country will fall into their hands with virtually no fighting at all and be completely occupied within a week at most.
He orders the invasion and we all saw the results. A 40-mile-long convoy ran out of fuel and was stuck because they did not have functioning tanker trucks to supply fuel to the vehicles. The elite troops who flew into the airfield north of Kyiv were shot up badly and their promised relief forces never arrived because they were in that convoy. Tanks ran out of fuel and were stuck along the side of the road. Except for a few Ukrainian officers who were co-opted in the southern part of the country, the Ukrainian Army fought back and so did the people.
Even now, the Russians have troops without winter gear in the field in Ukraine, without food, without proper weapons, and without adequate food. The other issue for the Russians is that they still fight the way they always have fought. The soldiers on the ground are not allowed to use their own initiative. The generals at the top draw up detailed plans and those are communicated down to the field level. But no one at the field level can alter the plan. So, if it is based on incorrect facts or the reality on the ground has changed significantly without the guys at the top knowing it, the field-level folks have to communicate up the command line for different orders. And that is where that who always BS comes into play. Lieutenant S is not going to communicate to Captain V that his plan is shit. The Lieutenant is going to say they have achieved their goals. The good captain is going to embellish that a tad to make himself look when he sends the report to the colonel and the colonel is going to do the same when he informs the general.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the twenty-man squads the Russians have sent out to hold a village now have 6 effective soldiers left out of the twenty and they are under constant bombardment by the Ukrainians.
This is why we have seen the Russians screw up constantly, losing men and equipment in actions that from a western military viewpoint seem absurd. The problem for the Russians is that they are fighting highly motivated Ukrainian soldiers who have western training, western gear, and who really do not want to be part of the Russian Federation. These are not undisciplined, poorly trained peasants in Syria armed with RPGs and old AKs.
The reality is that Putin lost the war by the end of the second week of the invasion. If his goals were to push NATO back farther from the Russian borders, install a government friendly to him in Kyiv, and flummox the West, he has lost completely. He is sitting on some Ukrainian land but there is a big difference between taking land and holding land. He is learning that now. He has lost half of what he had originally taken. He had destroyed about 80% of his combat-effective, trained troops that existed at the start of this war. He is the leader of the most sanctioned country in the world and his economy is about ready to collapse. He cannot replace the high-end military toys he had at the start of the war and he is using old equipment from back in the 1960s.
The best he could hope for right now is to hold onto what he is sitting on now. It looks like the Ukrainians are not willing to let that happen and in fact, they seem quite intent on rolling right on down into Crimea and the occupied areas of the Donbas.
Similar threads
