Posted on 08/23/2024 11:46:16 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
A notable outcome of Ukraine’s surprise invasion of the Russian province of Kursk — now stretching into its third week — is the Russian army’s reliance on thousands of unprepared, under-equipped, and poorly led conscripts in its attempt to repel the invasion.
It’s often under-appreciated in the West just how unpopular and politically sensitive the draft is in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The use of conscripts in Afghanistan and Chechnya (and their deaths in their thousands) was a huge part of the unpopularity of those wars inside Russia. In those years, the draft set off protests and a Russian “mothers’ movement” that elicited concessions from the Kremlin.
And one of the big concessions that the Kremlin has made during its “special military operation” in Ukraine is that Russian conscripts — usually drafted for one-year terms — would not be used outside sovereign Russian territory, i.e., they wouldn’t be used in Ukraine. Instead, the war would only be fought by “contract soldiers,” volunteers who have signed on to fight, usually after being offered significant financial incentives from the Russian state, as well as large numbers of former convicts, offered their freedom should they survive the meat grinder.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
“LOL, good luck with that pollyannish outlook.”
It’s more realistic than the Ukraine nationalist warmongering claims that if Russia wins, they’ll attack their NATO neighbors. There’s historical precedent. When Russia stole Ossetia or whatever the place is called from Georgia they could have kept going and conquered the entire trans-Caucasus if the claim of wanting to rebuild the Soviet Union was true. Then they could have kept going when they stole the Crimea. Ukraine didn’t fight back then.
It takes time for Russia to take what they can and what they need, to then absorb it and prepare for the next step.
Russia is not yet the empire it was 30 odd years ago, it has to build, bite, build and take a bigger bite, and so on, Ukraine is fundamental to that process.
In 2020 America had two major military threats against it, Russia and China, nothing has changed except that Russia has been set back for years because President Trump sent them those weapons and Ukraine had time to form an opposition and has destroyed so much of the Russian threat for the short term while NATO has had time to rebuild, reawaken, and refocus.
“Russia is not yet the empire it was 30 odd years ago, it has to build, bite, build and take a bigger bite, and so on”
Doubt it. It’s old style European border war. Like stealing Alsace-Lorraine from each other.
Interesting that you see it as nothing yet dozens of countries are spending billions and increasing or discussing military drafts, building fortifications, opening new weapons plants and ending generations of neutrality seeking protection within NATO as new members etc, because they see it differently from you, of course they have skin in the game and probably keep up with Russia a little more than you.
So what? They should have been doing that for decades instead of mooching off us. IDGAF what europukes think.
Strange reaction to learning that they are doing it now.
“Strange reaction to learning that they are doing it now.”
Not strange. Do you really believe Starmer and Scholz are in favor of strong militaries? I wouldn’t trust any of those europukes on anything. Except maybe Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic States they will backstab us in a red hot minute.
Yes strange, you won’t accept any good news and want to stay with the same argument you started with although you have to keep moving the lines, you just want to complain and not examine any changes or improvements.
“good news”
Maybe you trust and believe them, but they’ve backstabbed us before. They’ll do it again in a real pinch.
The things I have mentioned are facts, the budget spending, the factories, the new agreements in the Pacific, new troops and displacements, new weapon purchases, disentangling from dependence on Russian energy, new NATO members and changing geography for our European position, even more conservatives in European governments than 3 years ago and so on, many of these are concrete things, not just someone saying them.
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