The Peanut Gallery: Russian Volunteers Become Scarce Despite Ballooning Salaries
April 18, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Today we should all just take a deep breath.
Please remember that I know nothing.
Israel:
Bombs fell on Iran. The consensus seems to be coalescing around drones as the primary vector of attack, something I wasn’t even aware the West had in quantity. It’s all just rumors, of course. We know jack-shit, which is why I don’t have much of a source today. I could point to hearsay, or some article, but it’s all basically the same: Israel hit Iran, and Iran looks to be taking it on the chin.
I hope this will end the tit-for-tat pattern of escalation. I very much doubt, however, that it will be the end of this awful affair, because there’s another rumor bouncing around: that Israel is going into Rafah.
What’s left of Hamas hides within the Palestinian refugees. They are the roots—the last, true vestiges of the evil organization, and to really finish this will involve digging them out.
I think...God help me...I think I agree with Netanyahu; this war only ends with the complete eradication of Hamas. The Israeli people deserve to live in peace and security, even if it means exposing one-hundred and fifty thousand civilians to the ravages of war.
There are plans, of course, mitigating efforts to ensure the sanctity of human life, but no amount of effort will make this a bloodless task. The coming days and weeks will be difficult. The information war will be...rough, and so when you face it, when it swirls around you with lies and distortions, know that our cause is Just because we care. We care about the Palestinians, and we care about the Israelis, and we care about them because they are human and human life is sacred. The West is making a hard decision, but it’s one necessary to build a better world, a safer world for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Keep to that ideal.
Now let’s talk about Ukraine, yeah?
The Russian military has been generating forces at rates equal to its losses in Ukraine in recent months, and intensified monthly recruitment rates are unlikely to generate a considerable surplus of manpower for Russian operational- and strategic-level reserves.
Russian forces have maintained and even intensified offensive operations this spring, and these offensive operations will continue to consume a significant amount of manpower that could otherwise be used to form reserves if Russian forces sustain their current offensive tempo. Russian forces are therefore unlikely to establish extensive reserves ahead of their expected summer 2024 offensive effort. The limited remaining time for Russian forces to prepare for the expected summer offensive effort will likely mean that any additional manpower added to reserves in the coming months will be poorly trained and less combat effective.
We’ve all heard about Putin’s big “summer offensive”, right? The one where he’s supposed to sweep across the Donbas and finally shatter Ukraine’s spine? Yeah that’s some vatnik cope.
It’s April. To mount another offensive will require a mobilization surge the likes of which has not yet materialized. And if Russia intends to mount this imaginary offensive, then they need to be drafting people now. As in today. Training takes time. The longer they delay the less capable their army will be, so unless Russia intends to send the folks they picked up in their spring conscription, Putin will launch his summer attack at present strength. And as we saw in Avdiivka and Bakhmut, that's not enough.
See, that’s the issue with maintaining a constant offensive tempo. In most wars there are lulls in the fighting, weeks when nothing happens because both sides pause to take a breath. The Kremlin doesn’t work that way—they’ve been on one form of offensive footing or another since the Ukrainians paused their own offensive some seven months ago. Such a grinding effort chews through manpower, and we’re seeing signs Russia may be reaching its limit.
Bloomberg noted that Russian regional one-time payments for signing a contract have increased by 40 percent to an average of 470,000 rubles ($4,992), and a Russian insider source claimed that some Russian authorities are offering one million rubles ($10,622) for people to sign military contracts.
Russian officials are reportedly concerned about decreasing recruitment rates and may intend to make economic incentives a cornerstone of crypto-mobilization efforts in spring and summer 2024.
The Russian MoD claimed on April 3 that more than 100,000 Russians had signed military service contracts since the start of 2024, but intensified Russian crypto-mobilization efforts are highly unlikely to generate an additional 200,000 personnel ahead of the expected Russian offensive effort in summer 2024.
Eventually you run out of the stupid and the greedy.
I recall back in August the one-million-ruble offering was a big deal exclusively for Muscovites to serve in “elite” units, but these days it’s just the right half of the bell curve. There’s a point where money hits diminishing returns and the Kremlin seems to have found it. Cash, patriotism, and fear are the three main ways a nation encourages volunteers to sign contracts, and without said volunteers the Kremlin’s got nobody to shoot their fleeing conscripts.
Plummeting recruitment figures present the Kremlin with quite the dilemma. Russian patriotism hasn’t worked since...well, it never worked. And now money’s failing so I guess that just leaves fear.
Russian milbloggers seized on a violent crime committed by a migrant in Moscow on April 18 to reiterate calls for further restrictions in Russian migration policies.
Russian news outlet Mash reported on April 18 that an Azeri migrant killed a Russian man in Moscow and fled the scene.[24] Russian milbloggers largely responded to the murder by calling on Russian authorities to further restrict Russia’s migration policies and extend punishments for crimes committed by migrants.[25] Russian milbloggers warned that if the Russian government fails to respond to violence committed by migrants, Russians will be forced to “take matters into their own hands.”
The Kremlin is doing untold damage to their nation’s future by allowing the cancer of hate to spread. They are inflaming their labor shortage and driving a rift between Muscovites and a good two-thirds of their empire. Take it from an American: racism leaves scars.
Central Asian migrants take note: this language preludes a genocide. To kill a man one must first dehumanize him. That is what is happening now. Words become hate, hate becomes law, and law becomes death.
Seriously, folks. Read Maus. It’s an important book.
I find it tragically ironic that the Kremlin invaded Ukraine under the false pretext of a Nazi government in Kyiv, meanwhile day-by-day their own nation sinks into fascism. It seems like everything is projection with these people.
Ukrainian officials continue to warn that Russian forces are systematically and increasingly using chemical weapons and other likely-banned chemical substances in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Support Forces Command stated on April 5 that Ukrainian forces have recorded 371 cases of Russian forces using munitions containing chemical substances during the last month and 1,412 cases of Russian forces using chemical weapons between February 2023 and March 2024.
Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this war to an end.
I’ve got a work function I need to attend tomorrow evening, which means I won’t be available to make the usual post. If anyone wishes to fill in, the floor is open, otherwise I’ll see you folks Saturday! Try not to blow anything up while I’m gone, or if something does detonate then be sure to get it on video. I don’t want to miss it.
‘Q’ for the Community:
Fascism is a mindset, one which is far too easy to fall into. It starts with fear, which leads to hate. Do you see signs of rising fascism in your own neighborhood? If so, what are they?
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