The Russians refuse to die for Putin: why a soldier's rebellion in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is not so fantasy
Personnel changes in the Ministry of Defense of Russia also hint at official recognition: something is not quite as Kremlin propaganda says. But the most convincing testimony of increasing dissatisfaction with the Russians is the war shield, which recently appeared in St. Petersburg. "In the hero," the advertising says, "there are their characters. " Go to the Government Site or dial 117, enroll in the army - and receive a tremendous payment of 1.
3 million rubles, which is equivalent to the annual earnings of the average Russian. But what is especially important in this proposal is that the advertising shield appeared in the second city of Russia, which, like Moscow, is mostly devoid of coffins and dentures. These horrors are overwhelmingly concentrated in the poor of the non -Russian provinces of Russia, where 1. 3 million rubles are salaries in a few years. Disrupting its own taboo, the Kremlin shows that it clearly needs recruits.
More importantly, two years ago, the Russians were offered 200,000 rubles for the same. The price of the recruiter increased by 650 percent! Even with inflation, it is a huge growth that indicates that the demand for soldiers is high and supply is low. In such market conditions, prices go crazy. In other words, Russians are increasingly not wanting to serve and thus reduce supply, while labor deficiency on the battlefield increases and thus increases demand.
Given more than 535,000 killed and wounded and more than 1000 daily casualties, the Russians are aware that the regime uses them as gun meat. Such a change of moods promises bad news and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Their working assumption, as well as the opinion of too many Western politicians and analysts, was that the Russians adore punishment; That they will blindly go to death like sheep for a conversion.
The enthusiasm for war may have been high within a few months after the invasion, when it seemed that Russia would pass Ukraine. He was able to restrain Russia's humiliating departure from Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions a few months later. Since the mid -2023, the front has almost not moved in any direction, and the losses of the Russians have almost doubled: from about 600-800 people a day to at least 1200–1400 people.
Putin is obviously glad to exchange the life of the Russians for several square miles of Ukrainian dirt, but the Russians seem to be waking up and expressing their disagreement with meaningless death. We know that Russian soldiers were deserted and were captured.
Can an escape from the front soon reach a turning point and become a more reasonable behavior than sitting in a trenches that boils and wait for them to be killed? Can an attempt by the coup of Yevgeny Prigogine in June 2023 to become a harbinger of the future events? The story was full of examples as soldiers fled or rebelled against their commanders when the conditions at the front became unbearable and the likelihood of being executed for disobedience or desertion seemed less than the probability of being a killed enemy.
The Romans fought the disobedience, destroying, that is, killing one tenth of the detachments disturbed. During the First World War, more than 700,000 German soldiers were deserted. In 1917, thousands of French soldiers rebelled. Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers fled from the front in 1916-1918, thus accelerating the seizure of peasant lands and the people's appetite for the revolution.
At the beginning of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, several hundred thousand Soviet soldiers preferred captivity, not death. During the Vietnam War, US soldiers expressed their dissatisfaction, "fragments" their superiors. Note that in the XX century, the Russians revealed the greatest tendency to escape from the battlefield.
Therefore, the statement that the Russians are culturally programmed to subordinate teams, as incorrect as the statement that the Russians are not raising. Of course, they do it, and there is no reason to believe that they will not oppose the bloodthirsty Putin regime. Putin and his comrades were in a hopeless situation. If they stop recruiting soldiers on the front, they will not be able to bow the scales of Libra and defeat Ukraine. Indeed, they lose.
But if they forcefully mobilize soldiers, they will only exacerbate the incentives for desertion, thus undermining their military efforts. We do not know when a turning point comes in the mood of the soldiers, but we can make two assumptions. First, the longer the war will last, the more likely the Russians will refuse to fight. Since the influx of volunteers is exhausted, and violent mobilization is counterproductive, the conditions for exhausted fronts will become unbearable.
Anything, but not time on Putin's side. And secondly, if Russia is defeated, soldiers are likely to save their skins, leaving a drowning ship. Such a defeat can look anything: from the Ukrainian march to Moscow (extremely unlikely) to another violent withdrawal of troops from part of the occupied territory (quite probable). The loss of Crimea - everything or part - would be especially demoralized. Morality for Ukraine and its allies is simple: hold on.