#putin's troops are little more than cannon fodder

[tomorrowusa]

Putin's invading troops in Ukraine's east are suffering from an unpleasant and debilitating disease called mouse fever (мышиная лихорадка). The Russian military is providing little to no medical assistance and often dismisses complaints from soldiers about the malady as excuses to get away from combat.

Vladimir Putin’s soldiers in eastern Ukraine’s Kupiansk are reportedly falling sick because of a “mouse fever” outbreak – a viral disease that has left the invading Russian troops severely unwell. The outbreak of the so-called “mouse fever” has been recorded in many units of the Russian forces in the Kupiansk direction, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s main directorate of intelligence said on its official Telegram channel. “The disease is viral in nature and is transmitted to humans from rodents through direct contact with a causative agent as a result of inhaling dust from mouse excrement or getting it into food products consumed by humans,” it said. Symptoms of this fever “mowing down” Russian soldiers include vomiting, severe headache, fever up to 40 degrees celsius (104 degrees fahrenheit), rashes, redness, plummeting blood pressure, haemorrhages in the eyes and nausea. Ukraine’s intelligence wing said dissatisfaction was growing among Russian soldiers who are facing abandonment on medical assistance and provision of winter items, and the recent fever outbreak was an example of Russia’s inability to look after its troops fighting in Ukraine. The disease is also affecting the kidneys, as the infected Russian troops were facing intense pain in their lower back and have severe difficulty in urinating, officials said. “Complaints about fever from personnel of the Russian army, who are involved in the war against Ukraine, were ignored by the command, regarding them as another manifestation of evasion from participating in combat operations. In addition, at the first stage of the course, "mouse fever" resembles an ordinary flu,” the statement added.

Ukrainian intelligence should try to spread the rumor among Russians that vodka is a great home remedy for mouse fever. 🙂

Ukrainian forces have also been affected by the rodent problem but they have several advantages. Being on their home turf, they're able to bring cats to the front. They also have far better access to competent medical personnel. Plus the Ukrainians are just plain better at basic housekeeping.

The way the Kremlin has reacted to the mouse fever problem among its troops is yet another way it regards them as disposable.

UK Defense Ministry: Russia loses estimated 320,000 troops in Ukraine

The Ukrainian military's own estimate is 352,390 Russian fatalities (as of December 23rd). That Ukrainian figure is almost the same as the population of Honolulu. Indeed, 39 of the 50 US states have capitals whose populations are below the number of Russian fatalities in Ukraine. Putin doesn't care how many RUSSIANS he has to kill to get his way in Ukraine.

Russians need to either get rid of Putin or leave the country in order to save themselves.

[garudabluffs]

Israel Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like April 20 2024

Like countless other hostilities, the stealthy Israeli missile and drone strike on Iran doesn’t risk war. It is war.

"The war in Ukraine is certainly the world-altering event of the past five years, but even here, without more borders crossed, without escalation, and without Russia and NATO shooting at each other directly, some mighty lessons can be learned. Armies clashing is an illusion. World War III is thus not some conquering army sweeping its way across the continent. At no time have more than 300,000 soldiers been on the battlefield in Ukraine at any one time; in World War II, it was nearly 10 million facing each other on a daily basis (and some 125 million mobilized overall). Because of the greater lethality of weapons, military casualties in Ukraine have been enormous. But most of the ground engagements have taken place at the company or even platoon level; massing too many troops in one place is just too dangerous in today’s world. And this has all unfolded while neither Russia nor Ukraine have been able to harness airpower in the same way the United States has. Other than Vladimir Putin’s heartless offensive that used young Russian men as cannon fodder, few nations want to fight this way, preferring long-range air and missile (and now drone) attacks."

"Ubiquitous warfare, our World War III, paints a worldwide picture that is overwhelming, leaving little room to imagine that something can be done about it. And it’s hard not to conclude that the superpowers and the national security “community” aren’t somehow satisfied with the status quo. But as with addiction, the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem — or in this case, a global war."

READ MORE https://theintercept.com/2024/04/20/iran-israel-world-war-iii/

[mariacallous]

Russian forces, led by the Wagner mercenary group, have been waging an offensive to gain control of Bakhmut for more than seven months now. As of March 21, Wagner Group claims to have captured 70 percent of the city, and it increasingly appears likely to gain control of the rest. Ukraine’s military command has nevertheless chosen to keep defending the city, even at the expense of reserve forces. This may have delayed Wagner’s progress, but it hasn’t been enough to stop it. Meanwhile, Russia’s regular army, which is trying simultaneously to press forward in multiple areas against Ukraine’s more modest forces, has had little success in recent months. What is it that makes Wagner Group Russia’s most successful fighting force at this stage of the war? And how might the Ukrainian military respond more effectively? Meduza explains.

How Wagner Group waged war in Ukraine over the last year

For the first few weeks of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the private military company controlled by Putin-associate Evgeny Prigozhin (known as Wagner Group) was not involved. It wasn’t until April 2022 that Wagner units were deployed in Popasna, a Ukrainian-held city in the Luhansk region that had been on the contact line between Ukrainian troops and Russian proxy forces since 2015 and was thus well-equipped to defend itself.

At that point, Russia’s military command, which had by then suffered defeats in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv regions, launched offensives in multiple directions at once in the Donbas. Most of these assaults failed, but Wagner mercenaries managed to dislodge the Ukrainian military from Popasna (and Russian troops managed to take the city of Lyman).

The advance ended there

It’s been clear since the battle for Popasna that Wagner Group’s tactics are well-suited for this war’s conditions. One video from that period shows an assault group of mercenaries overtaking the positions of a larger Ukrainian unit with help form a reconnaissance drone. The clip stands in stark contrast to the images of urban combat that emerged from Mariupol and Rubizhne around the same time.

In October, Wagner Group had grown so large that it was assigned a significant portion of the front that stretched from northern Horlivka to Soledar (regular Russian troops are also stationed there and have played a supporting role since the fall). By November, when the Ukrainian military liberated Kherson and tried to advance on Svatove in the northern part of the Luhansk region, it became clear that Wagner Group was preparing an operation to capture Soledar and Bakhmut, despite Russian troops’ difficulties elsewhere along the front.

The Ukrainian military started redirecting its troops to the area around Bakhmut (including units that were freed up by the liberation of Kherson) and later even dismantled a group of forces deployed around Svatove to strengthen its defenses further in the center of the Donbas. To this day, however, these forces have been unable to halt Wagner Group’s slow advance. At the same time, none of the other offensives Russian forces have launched throughout the winter have yielded any significant results.

The key to Wagner Group’s effectiveness (and costliness)

In its scale and the size of the area it covers, Wagner Group is roughly comparable to the Russian military’s four groups of forces in Ukraine that are formed on the basis of the country’s Western, Central, Eastern, and Southern military districts. The mercenaries have their own artillery and even some level of aviation power.

Available details about the group’s structure and methods are limited. Most of the information we have comes from stories the mercenaries themselves have told to the “war correspondents” who work for entities owned by Wagner Group founder Evgeny Prigozhin. These stories are few in number and often vague.

Additionally, there is Ukrainian drone footage of Wagner fighters, reports from Ukrainian soldiers, and information from journalists who have interviewed soldiers and studied documents captured by Ukrainian troops. Independently confirming the authenticity of these reports is difficult, but, overall, they don’t contradict the documentary evidence from the Russian side, the drone footage, and what we know about the course of combat operations.

How Wagner Group differs from Russia’s regular forces

Wagner Group’s command shows a level of flexibility that the Russian Armed Forces lack. In the battle for Bakhmut, the group has repeatedly altered the directions of its major assaults. While it seemed in November that the mercenaries intended to attack and surround Bakhmut from the south, in early December, they suddenly replaced forces from the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic” around Soledar and captured several important suburbs (Yakovlivka and Bakhmutske). After that, the group once again shifted its focus to the south of Bakhmut, gaining control of part of the suburbs of Opytne before focusing its forces back on Soledar, which ultimately led to the town’s capture. This was followed by an attack further south, where Wagner forces captured Klishchiivka, a village that had been vital to Ukraine’s defense of Bakhmut. These frequent shifts in the direction of impact took a clear toll on Ukraine’s reserve forces. This approach differs fundamentally, for example, from the offensive on Vuhledar, where Russia’s command (from the Eastern Military District) has repeatedly been launching attacks along the same routes for months.

Wagner Group seems to be significantly more capable of concentrating its forces and resources on a target and appears to have successfully established cohesion between its assault units and support forces, including artillery and aviation forces.

Still, the mercenaries do have their weaknesses. Unlike the Russian Armed Forces, Wagner Group doesn’t even attempt to use mechanized units to launch quick strikes deep behind enemy defense lines. Instead, its units carry out their attacks on foot, only using armored vehicles (judging from videos and reports from Ukrainian soldiers) for transportation to the rear and to launch strikes from long distances. After capturing a Ukrainian position, Wagner Group typically embeds its forces there, tries to secure its flanks, and prepares its next attacks. The end result is methodical but slow progress. This allows the Ukrainian Armed Forces to send reinforcements to wherever the mercenaries are carrying out an attack. From July 2022 to mid-March, Wagner units didn’t progress in any direction more than 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Popasna (where they entered the war).

Wagner Group’s methods also demand enormous resources. In addition to suffering heavy losses in manpower, the group rapidly burns through ammunition; Prigozhin recently reported that he needs 10,000 metric tons of it per month. It’s not clear exactly what kind of ammunition he means, but if he’s referring only to shells and missiles for multiple rocket launchers (with the average weight of one of these munitions at 50 kilograms or 110 pounds), that means Wagner Group uses more than 6,500 rounds per day. That’s more than Ukraine’s Armed Forces use across the entire battlefield during the same period (according to Ukraine’s military command).

Different tactics

Wagner Group’s forces are organized into assault detachments that are themselves made up of assault groups. Ukrainian soldiers and journalists have reported that a Wagner assault group can contain between seven and fifty fighters.

Assault groups try to approach Ukrainian positions unnoticed (by moving at night, taking cover on the ground, etc.). Practically every group is accompanied by a reconnaissance drone (whereas the Russian Armed Forces are experiencing a drone shortage), which studies Ukraine’s positions in detail. Group commanders and their deputies reportedly receive detailed plans on electronic maps, which show the routes each mercenary should take. According to intelligence data, the resources necessary for each battle are also calculated in advance (including the number of stormtroopers that will give the group a numerical advantage and the amount of ammunition necessary to suppress Ukraine’s firing points).

Most Wagner units have reinforcements in the form of artillery that “process” Ukrainian positions after they’re attacked. Suppression fire from these reinforcements makes it possible for storm groups to get close to the targeted positions. After that, a “fire group” carries out strikes on identified Ukrainian firing points from mortars, automatic grenade launchers, and/or hand grenade launchers.

Afterward, the mercenaries begin storming the trenches or buildings where Ukrainian troops are posted. These attacks are guided by commanders who are observing the events remotely with the help of drones, using protected means of communication.

Wagner storm groups demonstrate more resilience than the Russian military; if an attack fails, they can mount it again. Wagner Group artillery gunners attempt to prevent Ukrainian reserve forces from approaching the battlefield.

Wagner mercenaries rarely use armored vehicles in close combat, but they use aviation more liberally than the Russian Aerospace Forces (Russian army aircraft try not to fly in areas reachable by Ukraine’s air defenses, whereas Wagner Group planes actively fly directly over the battlefield). At the same time, the mercenary group has both significantly less air power and a higher casualty rate.

Judging from videos, Wagner Group’s artillery is widely dispersed across the battlefield, allowing it to avoid extensive damage. This also facilitates effective management and communication. In the regular Russian army (at least in the war’s early stages), artillery was stationed close together and suffered heavy losses.

The downside of these tactics is significant: Wagner Group’s assault units consistently suffer heavy personnel losses. At the same time, according to Ukrainian soldiers and journalists, the highest losses are among the mercenaries (especially the recruited convicts) who storm Ukrainian trenches directly. Wagner Group’s command, incidentally, isn’t shy about spending what it views as a “cheap resource” while retaining its well-trained and experienced specialists.

This approach is largely in line with the standard assault tactics that were developed during the First World War. The main difference between Wagner Group and the Russian army, judging by various available descriptions of their activity, is that Wagner tends to gain the advantage over Ukraine by gathering and using intelligence and making quick decisions — in other words, the same practices that give the Ukrainian military an advantage over the Russian Armed Forces.

Can the Ukrainian military withstand these tactics?

According to Ukrainian military personnel who have studied Wagner Group’s tactics, the Ukrainian military’s problem is that many of its defense forces are static: soldiers are constantly sitting in the trenches or the buildings where they’ve been commanded to stay. Often, they don’t have enough intelligence resources (such as drones) for constant assessments of possible approaches by Russian mercenaries.

Finally, part of the problem comes from the Ukrainian military command’s own decision-making. For most of the battle for Bakhmut, Russia’s mercenaries had a numerical advantage. In those conditions, Kyiv had two least-bad options:

Transfer significant reserves to the part of the front that was under threat, equalize the balance of forces, and try to regain the initiative

Retreat and transfer its forces that were defending Bakhmut to more defensible positions

So far, however, Kyiv hasn’t chosen either option. The troops it has transferred to Bakhmut, meanwhile, haven’t been enough. Most likely, Ukraine’s military will be forced to decide sooner or later, but in worse conditions than if it had done so, for example, a month ago.

Why the Russian army doesn’t try to fight like Wagner Group

It’s possible that Russian commanders want to emulate Wagner Group. Ukrainian sources have published what they claim are stolen instructions for creating assault groups in the regular Russian army. These groups differ from Wagner Group assault groups in that they’re theoretically reinforced with armored vehicles. According to the documents, the groups make up larger assault battalions.

These kinds of storm detachments are already used in many units of the Russian Armed Forces and have even reportedly been “successfully applied” against Ukraine’s static defenses in weak spots. But recreating Wagner Group’s success will be difficult for the Russian army. The units containing the storm detachments are far from uniform: many of them suffer from chronic shortages of reconnaissance assets and protected communications systems, and their commanders are not inclined to show flexibility.

Additionally, in terms of political salience, the war would be much harder to square with Russia’s general public if draftees were to start dying at the same rate as Wagner fighters in recent months. The Russian authorities will likely do their best to avoid this situation.

Burning out

Despite its achievements on the battlefield, the future of Wagner Group itself is uncertain. In all likelihood, Evgeny Prigozhin has run afoul of the Russian Defense Ministry, which he has regularly accused of refusing to provide his mercenaries with the weapons they need since February 2023. In his account, this failure on the ministry’s part impeded the capture of Bakhmut and led to additional losses among Wagner fighters. The Defense Ministry has denied the accusations, saying supply requests from “volunteer units in 2022 were fulfilled by 140 percent.”

At the same time, according to Prigozhin, he’s no longer allowed to recruit prisoners, and Wagner Group’s forces are likely to shrink, as a result. The mercenary company now plans to replace convicts with “free” volunteers, but this resource has largely been exhausted over the last year.

Despite all the ink spilled in recent months about the fighting between Prigozhin and Russia’s military command, it’s still hard to gauge the conflict’s seriousness or what it means for Wagner Group’s role in the war going forward.

[baitdragon]

'Terrible toll': Russia's invasion of Ukraine in numbers

Ukrainian soldiers often use the term "cannon fodder" to describe the Russians sent to their death along the frontline.

When Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he started a war that has killed tens of thousands of people, ravaged cities, and pummelled the country's economy.

A year on, here is the cost of the conflict:

Military losses  According to the latest estimates from Norway, the conflict has wounded or killed 180,000 Russian soldiers and 100,000 Ukrainian troops.

Other Western sources estimate the war has caused 150,000 casualties on each side. In comparison, some 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in a whole decade of fighting in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Ukrainian soldiers often use the term "cannon fodder" to describe the Russians sent to their death along the frontline.

They are often poorly trained conscripts who stand little chance against Ukrainian forces determined to defend their country.

Others are convicts recruited in Russian jails to swell the ranks of Russian paramilitary group Wagner, who Kyiv and its allies say are deployed on near-impossible missions with the equivalent of a gun pointed to their head.

The onslaught has also taken its toll on the Ukrainian side, as shown by the endless blue and yellow national flags fluttering above cemeteries across the embattled country.

Civilian losses By the time Moscow's forces seized control of Mariupol in late May after three months of heavy bombardment, the southern port city had been reduced to a sea of rubble strewn with dead bodies.

Kyiv said at least 20,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed.

In total, some 30,000 to 40,000 civilians have lost their lives nationwide in the conflict, Western sources say.

In late January, the United Nations estimated that 18,000 civilians had been killed or wounded in the fighting, but said the real figure was likely much higher.

Ukrainian authorities say at least 400 children have been killed.

The United Nations says most of the killed civilians lost their lives during Russian bombardment.

Long term, landmines will also be a huge threat to civilians.

Kyiv says 30 percent of Ukrainian territory has been contaminated, while Human Rights Watch accuses Ukrainian troops of having planted banned anti-personnel landmines in the eastern region of Izyum.

Experts warn demining could take decades.

War crimes  Several images have come to symbolise the war's devastating impact on ordinary Ukrainians.

When AFP journalists entered the Kyiv suburb of Bucha on April 2, 2022, they found one street littered with the bodies of civilians.

One man had fallen onto his bike, another still had a shopping bag in his hand. Yet another had his hands tied behind his back.

Days later, a child's toy lay bloodied at a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, after a Russian missile hit as thousands of civilians waited for a train to flee the violence. At least 57 civilians were killed.

The previous month, people around the world saw the photograph of a heavily pregnant woman on a stretcher being evacuated from a Mariupol hospital after it was bombed. Neither she nor her baby survived.

Around 65,000 suspected war crimes have been reported throughout the war, the European Union's justice commissioner Didier Reynders says.

UN investigators have accused Russia of committing war crimes on a "massive scale" in Ukraine -- bombings, executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.

Kyiv alleges Moscow has forcibly deported more than 16,000 children to Russia or areas controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

Several NGOs have condemned Ukraine, meanwhile, for violating the rights of Russian prisoners of war, but on a much smaller scale.

The International Criminal Court launched an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity last year.

But it cannot prosecute either country for any possible war crimes since neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the Hague-based court.

Kyiv is instead pressing for a special tribunal to be set up to prosecute Moscow for the crime of aggression because it sees this as a way to achieve faster justice and more easily target the Kremlin's top officials.

1,500-km frontline On the eastern battlefront, entire villages and towns lie in ruins, and the earth is dotted with huge craters.

Exhausted soldiers lie in wait at the bottom of muddy trenches, while the dull thud of artillery fire booms overhead.

The "active" frontline runs north to south along 1,500 km (900 miles) of territory, according to Valery Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces.

Among the hotspots is the town of Bakhmut, dubbed "hell on earth" by many Ukrainian soldiers, where Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries have been steadily inching forward in recent weeks.

A few thousand civilians still live in the town, hunkering in cellars without running water or electricity, taking great risks when they venture out for fresh air, food, water and fuel.

Moscow's troops occupy almost a fifth of Ukraine, according to figures from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

But Zaluzhny says Ukrainian forces have managed to wrest back some 40 percent of territory occupied after the invasion last year.

Battered economy Fighting has been concentrated in the east of Ukraine since Russian forces withdrew from the north of the country a month into the war, following their failure to capture Kyiv.

In these areas, homes, businesses and factories have been ravaged.

Nationwide, Russia has repeatedly targeted key energy infrastructure in recent months, causing blackouts and leaving millions without heating this winter.

The World Bank in October said it expected the country's economy to contract by 35 percent in 2022.

The Kyiv School of Economics in January estimated it would cost $138 billion to replace all the infrastructure ravaged by war.

In a country famed for its cereal and sunflower oil exports, the war has caused more than $34 billion in economic losses in the agricultural sector, it said in November.

Some 3,000 schools and 239 cultural sites have been affected by the fighting, the UN cultural fund says.

Rebuilding Ukraine following the invasion would cost an estimated $349 billion, a joint assessment by the Ukrainian government, the European Commission and the World Bank found in September.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to exact a terrible toll," the World Bank's Anna Bjerde said at the time.

Millions of refugees More than eight million Ukrainians have been forced to flee Ukraine since the war broke out, the UN refugee agency says, the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Neighbouring Poland hosts the largest share of these refugees, with more than 1.5 million of them.

More than five million people have been displaced inside the country.

Moscow says another five million people have sought refuge in Russia, though Kyiv has accused the Russians of conducting "forced evacuations".

Western military aid  When Russia invaded, the Ukrainian armed forces mostly had outdated, Soviet-era era military equipment to defend themselves.

Kyiv has repeatedly urged its Western allies to send it modern weaponry, from air defences systems to heavy tanks.

The West was initially reluctant to becoming too involved in order to avoid any more direct confrontation between it and nuclear-armed Russia, but little by little it has ceded to most demands.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky's request for F-16 fighter jets has so far gone unheeded.

Among the aid, the United States dispatched Himars precision rocket launchers, with a range of 80 km (50 miles) far superior to that of Russian equipment, that analysts say helped turn the tide this autumn in the battle against the Russians in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and Kherson region in the south.

By November, Kyiv's allies had pledged more than 37 billion euros ($40 billion) in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

That figure does not include the latest announcements in January that the United States, Canada and several European countries will send Ukraine modern battle tanks.

[theculturedmarxist]

I’m wondering why MSM keeps reporting that Russia is “losing” when it’s so clearly the opposite. I don’t understand how this narrative benefits those in power. Thoughts?

It's something I've been thinking about, too.

When I talk to people that get their news from the MSM, the picture they paint is almost a photo negative of the impression I get online. From what I've seen:

The Ukrainian navy and air force virtually ceased to exist after the first 24 hours of the war

the Russians have not been putting their full weight into the operation, with the disparity being about 200K Rus vs 600k Ukr

Rus has effectively accomplished or in the process of accomplishing most of its goals

foreign fighters have a less than stellar fighting record, and are basically cannon fodder

I can't say for certain that these are the facts on the ground. There's so much mis and disinformation, statements and retractions, etc, going around that it's difficult to tell with total certainty what's true and what isn't. I feel like it is pretty safe to say though that the war is generally going Russia's way, which is exactly the opposite of what the US wants to happen.

The US's goals are total global hegemony, and to do that it has to assert dominance over its main economic and military competitors Russia and China. I think it's also safe to say that given Nato's refusal to admit Russia, and the US's "pivot to Asia," that rapprochement and integration of Russia and China in anything other but submissive and subordinate positions is utterly unacceptable to the US.

I think Biden gave the game away recently when he stated the Putin cannot be allowed to remain in power. Some of his other statements are illuminating as well:

Not content to disrupt global food supplies he also announced his future plans for Ukraine. He said this to 82nd Airborne troops stationed in Poland. "And you’re going to see when you’re there.  And you — some — some of you have been there.  You’re going to see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the middle of — in front of a damn tank, just saying, 'I’m not leaving.  I’m holding my ground.'  They’re incredible." Why are U.S. troops going to see anything in Ukraine? He tried to clean it up with “you may have already seen it” but he was saying that he intends to have US troops deployed in a country where Russia already has forces. His photo opportunity turned into the announcement of a hot war.

One of the intentions of the US has been to try and get Russia embroiled into another Afghanistan-style, prolonged insurgency. I think it's becoming very apparent that this plan is unlikely to pan out like Washington wants it. From what I've heard Zelensky is getting ready to capitulate and give Russia whatever it wants. If that happens, the insurgency's over before it really begins, Putin comes out in a stronger position, Russia's losses of men and money are minimal, and Washington et al come out looking like clowns.

So if Nato wants this war to continue, they're going to have to get involved themselves, and that basically means the US is going to have to go to war with Russia. After 20 years of military adventurism, a devastated economy, global pandemic, Trump derangement syndrome, and everything else, Americans definitely don't have the stomach for another large scale military conflict, especially not one with comparable capabilities like Russia. Compare the support for a "no-fly zone" before and after its explained what exactly that would mean. Americans by and large are more concerned with food prices, gas prices, their paychecks, and Covid with whatever is happening in a country that most of them can't even find on a map.

The only way to get the little people on board with Washington's next great idea is to convince them otherwise. Russia has to be made out to be cartoonishly evil and buffoonishly weak. Ukraine then has to be made out to be heroically committed to defeating Evil™, but in need of American muscle to do it. American involvement has to implicitly be necessary, but painless. America's brave marines won't be fighting warriors hardened in the cauldrons of Chechnya or Syria, but badly led conscripts that abandon their expensive war machines as soon as they run out of gas and are desperate for Americans to send them packing. Once they get a taste of Good Ol' American Freedom™, they'll go home and overthrow their evil dictator

If Americans had any understanding of what fighting Russia would really mean, they'd be completely against it. That's why the MSM has to downplay Russia's successes and diminish their capabilities. Russia has to be made to look like they're on the verge of defeat, ready for the American knock-out blow.

That's what I hope is the case, anyway. There are other possibilities too, like it being a way for Washington to save face by all their investment in Ukrainian neo-Nazis being a complete failure. Anything short of Russia fully annexing Ukraine will be talked up like a victory for Washington.

The other, possibly more terrifying, possibility is that Washington really does believe all they nonsense they say about Russia. I'd like to hope that the Pentagon isn't as divorced from reality as the Senate, but who can say?

edit:

Also, thank you for the ask!

[ultrajaphunter]

(via Russia’s mobilization of 300,000 reservists will likely be a disaster)

Russia is mobilizing 300,000 reservists for the war in Ukraine. Here’s why it’ll be a disaster

Russian reservists may end up as little more cannon fodder in Ukraine.

BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED SEP 21, 2022 3:00 PM

In this photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Jan. 22, 2022, servicemen of the engineer-sapper regiment take the military oath in the Voronezh Region, Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via Associated Press).

Amid recent Ukrainian military victories and continuing losses of troops and equipment, the Kremlin plans to throw 300,000 reservists who have been out of uniform for years into combat with little or no remedial training.

On Wednesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the Russian military would be calling up reservists “who have served, have a military speciality, that is, a speciality that is needed today in the Armed Forces, who have combat experience,” Reuters reported.

This move comes as Russia is reportedly trying to annex parts of Ukraine that it has captured, just as it did with Crimea in 2014.

For perspective, a Russian reservist is in a much different situation than a U.S. service member in the Select or Individual Ready Reserve. Most of the troops in the Russian reserves are former conscripts who served for one year or two years and have not had any training since, said retired Marine Col. J.D. Williams, a defense policy researcher with the RAND Corporation.

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“It won’t be pretty, it won’t be efficient, but they’re going to be able to find the people,” Williams told Task & Purpose. “I think the more relevant issue is: How capable and ready are they going to be — not very. How much training are they willing to give them before they send them out to the front lines. Right now, the indications are — the way they’ve pumped units into Ukraine — is not a lot and certainly not enough.”

One major difference between Russian and U.S. reservists is that American service members come off the rolls of the Individual Ready Reserve after a certain number of years, while former Russian service members do not, Williams told Task & Purpose.

“But they stay on those rolls, unlike our U.S. Select Reserve and IRR: It’s a smaller pool — but of people who have recently had fairly extensive active-duty service,” Williams said. “Their pool is a much larger group of people, who have served small periods of time some time in the past. You could have some people who have served relatively soon, but a lot of them are going to be five, 10 or more years out of service.”

Russia’s partial mobilization applies to men with prior military service between the ages of 18 and 50 years old as well as women with “an accounting specialty,” according to RTVI, a privately owned Russian language television network.

That means the older reservists being mobilized may have last seen service in the Soviet Armed Forces, said retired Marine Col. Michael Samarov, who managed a team for planning Russia, Europe, and NATO strategy and policy that advised the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Further, the Putin regime isn’t starting mobilization with a pre-war population,” Samarov told Task & Purpose. “Presumably, Russian Inactive Reserve members that were predisposed to serve have already volunteered. Conversely, there have been several mainstream media reports noting that some number of Russian males have left the country to preemptively avoid potential mobilization. What remains are likely older, less healthy/fit, less motivated people who generally won’t make good soldiers.”

Getting these reservists into fighting shape will likely be even more difficult for the Russians because there are indications that most of Russia’s military training and education establishment has already deployed to Ukraine, Samarov said. Under these conditions, it is likely the Russian defense ministry will decide to send untrained troops into the fight rather than taking trainers out of operations to get the reservists combat ready, he said.

Aside from the challenges of getting reservists ready for battle, there is also the question of whether the Russian military has enough modern weapons and other equipment for the hundreds of thousands of new troops that it is calling up, Samarov said.

“Just having access to numbers of human beings means little without the ability to organize, train, and equip the forces a state intends to build from those human beings,” Samarov said. “I might be proven wrong, but I don’t think that any sort of Russian Inactive Reserve mobilization will produce any kind of decisive combat power. More likely, the Kremlin is building units that will struggle to operate and will sustain a disproportionate number of casualties.”

[tomorrowusa]

Some people in the West believe Putin's propaganda about Russia's overwhelming strength. Though if you do a simple reality check, you'll notice that Russia's "3-day special operation" in Ukraine is now in Day 870.

Yekaterina Shulman used to work as a consultant to the Russian government. She left Russia soon after Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Here are some excerpts from an interview she gave to RFE/RL.

I’ve called Russia a “bureaucratic autocracy.” It’s a personalist autocracy in strict political science classification. We don't have a ruling party like party autocracies. Russia is not run by a military junta like military autocracies. We don't have an established succession mechanism that monarchies have. So we’re a personalist autocracy: Power is concentrated in the hands of the leader and his immediate surrounding. However, we’re a big country that can't be run by a president and his five friends [alone]. [ ... ] The Russian state has never paid that much money to its people for anything -- for their work, for their life, for their death, for whatever. The idea that Russia is a country of limitless resources is a propaganda picture. But the strange thing, and it is so strange that we can't realize it, is this: It has always been the case in Russia's history that people are abundant but money is scarce. Hard currency, gold, or foreign currency have value; people have no value whatsoever. “We have as much [human capital] as we need.” Now it's the other way around. I can't adequately explain to you, I can’t even explain to myself what a gamechanger it is. They don't understand it themselves, because they've never seen anything like this. [ ... ] [W]e don't have enough Russians. We have more money than we know what to do with, but we don't have the people -- either on the front lines or back home. We have a huge labor deficit, and very slowly there comes a realization that you can't pay 1.25 million rubles to a person who in two weeks’ time will be killed in a senseless “meat grinder,” as the expression goes. The army management doesn't understand this yet. The political leadership doesn't understand it yet but is slowly beginning to realize it. I don't know what the implications will be; I can only tell you as a social scientist that it's a huge change. [ ... ] Whatever factor we take -- be it the labor crisis that I mentioned, the demographic situation, the economic imbalances, the aging of personalist rule, the infighting of the clans, where now everyone has a little private army of their own -- each and every one of these factors and all of them in combination are factors of long-term decline. As a Russian citizen, as a Russian educator, I get no pleasure at all in saying this. The question that I get is whether this or that event or occurrence or tendency will, in stark terms, upset Putin or defeat Russia; and the answer is no, not immediately. But none of them will go away. It will be a country with an aging society, with a disbalanced economy, with an incompetent leadership, and these are the factors of inevitable decline. It’s very bad. It's bad for the country; it's bad for the continent.

Russian rulers dating back to the tsars have regarded their large populations of poor people as cannon fodder to be used in wars when needed. This has sometimes compensated for corrupt and incompetent military leadership. But Russia is running out of troops to send on "meat wave" attacks in Ukraine. And hundreds of thousands of tech savvy young people have already left the country since the war began. Russia is experiencing a self-inflicted demographic wound.

Putin has to rely on technology from China and arms manufacturers in North Korea to keep his war going. Out of frustration he's bombing children's hospitals and apartment buildings in Ukraine. Terrorism is his only response to a deteriorating situation.

Russia may look real big on maps but in economic terms, it has a GDP similar to that of Italy.

Narcissism is a common trait among dictators. This war is driven by Putin's nostalgic desire to bring back the USSR of his youth in all but name. He wishes to be the Peter the Great of the 21st century. This is essentially the War of Putin's Ego. But all the bluster of Putin, his propaganda machine, and his Western lickspittles can't indefinitely mask the precarious nature of contemporary Russia.

[mariacallous]

Six months after Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged that his “special military operation” to eradicate the Ukrainian nation wouldn’t require a general mobilization of Russia’s men, the flagging leader has doubled back on his word, sparking outrage across Russia. Declaring that 300,000 “reservists”—nominally those with previous military service—would be mobilized, the deadly combination of unrest at home and an ever more limited military apparatus facing down an increasingly better-armed Ukrainian army means that even if Moscow can meet its recruitment goals, Putin’s mobilization is doomed to fail.

Momentum continues to be on Ukraine’s side. Its armed forces are doubling down on their successful offensive in the east, and the United States announced a new tranche of long-term military support, including more than doubling Ukraine’s stock of HIMARS—the devastating artillery rocket system that was crucial to Ukraine being able to take the fight to more occupied territories. The Ukrainian public has retained, and even strengthened, its remarkable resolve to win outright.

Russia’s outlook, on the other hand, is increasingly grim. Putin’s mobilization of just about anybody caught in the military’s dragnet, combined with viral reports of minimal training, has created a panic among Russians.

Sending untrained, underequipped, and largely unwilling men to fight in Ukraine will be a slaughter with little precedent in modern war fighting, and the more than 260,000 Russian men who have fled the country since Putin’s announcement know it.

Those unlucky enough to be conscripted have few qualms about sharing their abysmal conditions on social media. Online posts show a variety of rusty Kalashnikov rifles being distributed as well as bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifles that were already defunct a century ago. Officers declare to bewildered new troops that they need to source their own supplies, such as sleeping bags, and that they should ask their girlfriends to send tampons because there aren’t enough medical supplies to go around.

In the United States, new Army recruits need 10 weeks of basic training, at a bare minimum, to be ready for combat. Russia’s haphazard mobilization is sending men to fight with a week or two if they’re lucky—some have been sent with no preparation at all.

“It is criminal to send untrained soldiers into combat. … It’s murder,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who led U.S. Army forces in Europe, told the Moscow Times. “I doubt these men will survive very long.”

The tens of thousands of Russian troops already killed in Ukraine were largely contract soldiers and mercenaries. Despite well-documented equipment and morale issues, these men had at least some level of preparation for fighting a war, in sharp comparison to the young, old, and sometimes sick recruits being sent to die now.

In stark contrast, Ukraine’s military has spent the last eight years reshaping itself from the kind of decrepit Soviet-style force that Russia still has into a modern, Western-style military with an emphasis on professionalization.

As Russia is rushing to throw as many men into the fight as possible, some Ukrainian units have actually been trimming the fat from their forces. One unit defending the village of Dementiivka on the road to the Russian border city of Belgorod has started turning away many of the new applicants eager to join up, with Artem Ryzhykov, who runs the battalion’s Facebook page and fields these applications, rationalizing that “one good fighter is better than 10 useless guys.” In July, Ryzhykov was tasked with cutting 10 percent of the unit’s fighters to better professionalize the battalion.

“We fired all of the crazy and unreliable soldiers and assembled a team of only professional fighters,” Ryzhykov said. “The quality of warriors is much better.”

Ukraine is also making long-term investments in its fighting force, sending both its seasoned soldiers and eager recruits abroad to receive training from Western militaries. The United Kingdom recently began a joint training program designed to train 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, bringing them together with instructors from the British Army and five other allied militaries.

Ukraine’s output from programs like these is on a smaller scale than Putin’s stated goal of 300,000 mobilized soldiers, but Kyiv isn’t aiming for volume. Ukraine is not suffering from a lack of willing volunteers, as those turned away from recruitment centers show; it’s betting that a highly professional force using some of the best equipment in the world, combined with continued assistance and intelligence from Western partners, can win out over Russia’s untrained masses.

While Ukraine is receiving a steady supply of advanced heavy weapons from the West, it isn’t receiving everything it says it needs. The United States has long been resistant to giving Ukraine long-range ATACMS munitions, which would nearly triple the range of the rocket launchers that Washington has supplied. Ukraine has also asked for modern fighter jets and Western tanks, the latter of which is currently being hotly debated in Germany as Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition is ramping up pressure for a change in German policy to finally deliver Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles.

The delivery of these weapons would dramatically aid Ukraine in the defense of its skies and its ability to conduct combined arms offensives to liberate occupied territory, as it did in the Kharkiv region. The reluctance of Washington, Berlin, and other Western capitals to supply these weapons does not doom Ukraine, but it does place unnecessary limits on Kyiv’s capabilities at a time when Russia’s weakened forces are trying to regroup.

There’s a reason Putin is relying on nuclear threats to try to return some fearsomeness to Russia’s diminished fighting force. But even here, Ukraine’s resolve shines through as officials in Kyiv simply acknowledge the possibility of their city being annihilated by a nuclear weapon, declaring that a strike would only change the costs of this war, not the outcome of an eventual Ukrainian victory.

Putin’s mobilization is happening because Russia is losing the war. Recent weeks have seen the Kremlin rolling out a variety of initiatives with the intention of either turning the tide, as with Putin’s mobilization, or trying to solidify existing gains, as with Russia’s faux referendums and annexation of partially occupied regions. But the occupied territories are squarely in Kyiv’s sights as Ukraine plans to use its expanding toolkit of Western weapons to conduct further offensives.

Ukrainians have asserted from the beginning that victory, meaning the liberation of all occupied territory, would be their endgame. Serious challenges remain, such as the fact that further offensives will be particularly difficult once winter sets in. But Ukraine’s leadership maintains that this war may be longer and bloodier than anyone wants to imagine—an outlook far less rosy than Putin’s belief that Ukraine could be conquered in a few days. But it’s an outlook more grounded in reality than the Kremlin’s belief that a haphazard mobilization of untrained and underequipped men can salvage its flagging war effort.

Committing to winning a war, whatever the cost, is not made overnight. Ukrainians spent years building the infrastructure required to defend their country, while Russia’s system for sourcing and training a fighting force wasted away like the expired rations given to its vanguard in Ukraine. Putin’s decision to mobilize his country was doomed before it began.