This probably saves on the expense of sending around officers to console parents.
During peace time is probably to cover up the number of suicides each year in the military—which, in past years, are generally pretty high due to the Russian Army’s Gulag culture of torture and rape.
It is quite possible that high Russian casualties could trigger Putin’s ouster.
If there are high Russian casualties, I think we will see mass protests in major Russian cities, like hundreds of thousands of people in numbers that could overwhelm the security services.
And this is because of the difference between the Donbass operation and what Putin has gone on to do, which is bomb the entire country, lay siege to Kharkiv and other major cities and now apparently to go into Kiev and kill a lot of people.
Putin doesn’t normally have majority popular support anyway, he relies on controlling the ballot counting and intimidation and tries to dominate social media with an army of paid posters (on Russian social media these are called Kremlebots), but nevertheless people support his effort to resolve the situation in Donbass because of the suffering of the civilians there for eight years.
Putin has made himself de facto Ruler-for-Life. If he does get removed, then, given the nature of authoritarian regimes, it will likely be a faction of the political/security apparatus within his own government that moves against him for the good of the Russian people.
If Putin can get away with this conquest of Ukraine with relatively few casualties, he will probably be okay. But big casualties especially among the conscripts could be a problem.
yup, ash tells no tales
Dr. Fauci promptly declared that all Russian military deaths are in fact unvaccinated COVID deaths.
Protesting at the nation’s capital punishable by up to 7 years in jail 🤪
Oh wait - wrong country 🤫