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Well, yes, but not sure how big an effect this will have

‘Our boys do not want this war’: The grieving widows of Russian soldiers speak out against Putin
Despite propaganda over casualties, there are signs that thousands of wives and mothers could prove to be the Kremlin’s Achilles heel

Mum of the guard on the palace gate and all that.

Except.

Casualties among professional military – of which Russia does have some – aren’t the sort of thing that produces that sort of reaction. Privately just as painful as any other loss of course but the death of folk who have signed up to fight as a professional life just doesn’t resonate across society.

The mass death of conscripts, ah, yes, that does. Or at least can. But conscripts in Russia are, almost by definition, the kids of the rural rubes and the lumpenproletariat – the people without any contacts or weight in Russian society. The very reason they got caught by conscription is that the families have none of the societal weight that would have got them out of it.

It’s even true that mourning mothers should have weight but given the way Russian society and conscription works I don;t think they will, at least not very much.

14 thoughts on “Well, yes, but not sure how big an effect this will have”

  1. Bloke in North Dorset

    Unless the Russians were stupid enough to form Pals Battalions the deaths won’t be concentrated enough to spur collective action.

    There may be lots of small protests but they’ll be easy enough to suppress and be ignored by the media.

  2. Bloke in the Fourth Reich

    Are you really saying that 70 years of communism didn’t result in a fair and equal society where all carry the same burden and have the same say?

    Whodathunkit!

  3. Western media reports are more to do with wishful thinking than reality… the strong desire to show Russia can’t win; is losing. All we need is to ship some more weapons stuff and increase tte sanctions and that will finish Russia off.

  4. @BitFR: It’s “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.

    You’re able to provide a son to fight without being able to kick up a fuss, I need bodies to fight a ridiculous war to maintain my power and self-delusion.

  5. I’m mildly disappointed the Russians didn’t manage to slot BloJo whist he was in Kyiv. Couldn’t someone at MI6 have provided decent targeting info. It’s what the Russians are paying them for, isn’t it?

  6. Bloke in the Fourth Reich: you’re forgetting that what was practised in Russia wasn’t true Communism.

  7. John B : so when the Russians withdrew ignominiousy from Kiev, that was because they are winning? Still, I suppose that retreat was simply western propaganda, not an actual retreat.

    Russia has already lost: the issue now is how badly. Will they lose Crimea, as well as the Donbas? Will they go broke, or will their army crack first?

  8. Despite propaganda over casualties

    FACT CHECK: 6 million Russians troops have been killed by the Ghost of Kyiyiv (who is none other than Volodymir Zelensky moonlighting as AirWolf)

    BiS – the Russians didn’t manage to slot BloJo whist he was in Kyiv

    I’m not Sherlock Holmes or nothing, but I think there’s a very obvious response to the question “did Special Branch allow a Prime Minister to travel to a country at war, and specifically to a city whose own government claimed just 2 days ago is infested with Russian spies and saboteurs?”

    But if we’ll believe Boris went to Ki-whatever, we’ll believe anything, won’t we?

    But conscripts in Russia are, almost by definition, the kids of the rural rubes and the lumpenproletariat – the people without any contacts or weight in Russian society

    Basically yes (and Russian conscription is particularly brutal and vile, lot of those lads get raped or bullied into suicide). But they were never meant to be in Ukraine, looks like a major oopsie on the part of the Russian army that any of them were involved in the first place – Putin promised Russian Mumsnet they wouldn’t be. Huge embarrassment when some of them got captured by Ukies the very next day, and the Russian MoD subsequently claims to have pulled the national service boys out.

    Russia has been trying to professionalise its forces for decades, with some success, but they can’t really afford to do all the things they think they should be able to do with their military, which is partly why they still have conscription and partly why they occasionally pretend to have science fiction wunderwaffens.

  9. You’re possibly right, Steve. And no doubt his foreign excursion was organised by the FO whose reputation for fucking up is proverbial. No doubt Uruguay or Uganda.

  10. The conscripts must be about to finish their year’s contract. I suppose they’ll just be appointed as Reservists and called up for reserve duty. Will any of the new year’s bunch of conscripts actually show up for training? If they do won’t they be a burden on the NCOs who will have to train them? Would those NCOs be more use fighting in the Donbas?

    Do similar considerations apply for the Ukes?

  11. Dm – the Ukies got flooded with Western Walters and quickly found out they were a burden even as poorly armed guard fodder. They’re now vetting foreign volunteers quite thoroughly.

    Their internal conscription seems to be more like something out of The Dark Knight Rises than an actual military operation, they’ve emptied the prisons and handed out small arms to any Ukie capable of carrying them. The other day they claimed to have caught another “16 groups” (possibly a translation error) of Russian infiltrators in the city formerly known as Kiev, but it looks like there’s a lot of score settling and random thuggery going on so no telling if any of the people they’ve shot/arrested/tortured are actually Russian agents or just neighbours they fell out with. The place badly needs Judge Dredd.

  12. Coincidence but yesterday my random playlist threw up Red Army Blues by the Waterboys a song about Russian WW2 soldiers being shipped straight to gulags on return from Germany. Just another reminder of how the western media continues to forget the Russians aren’t like the west.

  13. FACT CHECK: 6 million Russians troops have been killed by the Ghost of Kyiyiv (who is none other than Volodymir Zelensky moonlighting as AirWolf)

    This show is a bit like Jon Stewart; clown nose on, clown nose off.

    The Ukrainians, with a lot of Russian assistance, managed to contain “Special Military Operation” mark one. This was no mean feat. It’s a fantastic result. No amount of derisory belittling can take that away.

    It seems odd the Ukrainians would vet foreign volunteers to avoid a burden yet conscript prisoners and anyone who hold a gun. It’s almost as if the story is incomplete to the point of being bullshit. The reality is the Russian failure has given the Ukrainians time to mobilise their reserves, so “Special Military Operation” Mark II isn’t going to be a walk in the park either.

    It’s early days, but so far the Russians seems to repeating their mistakes from the north – pushing insufficient resources through unsuitable terrain and getting them ambushed. It’s not clear if they can amass enough combat power to take Kharkiv, which is what they need to do to effectively trap and destroy the Ukrainians in the Donbas. Indeed, they seem to be taking a defensive posture around the city, as they did at Kyiv.

  14. PJF – This show is a bit like Jon Stewart

    Thanks.

    The Ukrainians, with a lot of Russian assistance, managed to contain “Special Military Operation” mark one.

    Eh, have they? Gosh.

    It seems odd the Ukrainians would vet foreign volunteers to avoid a burden yet conscript prisoners and anyone who hold a gun. It’s almost as if the story is incomplete to the point of being bullshit

    I know, yet it’s not bullshit. The videos coming out of Kiora are wild, it’s like Jackass meets Mad Max (tbf it was already pretty bad before the war). There is a certain logic though: unlike the Reddit Manchildren’s Crusade, Ukrainians can actually speak Ukrainian and probably won’t run away to Poland as soon as they get shot at.

    It’s not clear if they can amass enough combat power to take Kharkiv, which is what they need to do to effectively trap and destroy the Ukrainians in the Donbas. Indeed, they seem to be taking a defensive posture around the city, as they did at Kyiv.

    No idea, it’s amazing that we’re in the Year of Our Lord 2022 and despite the petabytes of coverage there’s very little in the way of actual news about this war, just plenty of bollocks such as pretending Boris Johnson went to Kyiv/Kiev/Kevin. But whatever “demilitarisation and denazification” means today (and it means whatever Putin says it does), there don’t seem to be any paths to peace now, the West is never going to unsanction Russia, and it’s now sadly doubtful whether an economically and politically viable “Ukraine” can emerge from this Ukerfuffle or whether they’ll be left a depopulated and shrunken zombie state with a catastrophically ageing population and even more heavily armed thugs.

    Barring an unexpected battlefield victory by Ukraine or some sort of collapse of Russian lines (just minus 20 days to go according to Bellingcat) or a coup in Moscow this is heading towards yet another frozen conflict. If we’re lucky, a deep frozen and highly localised one like in Cyprus. If we’re unlucky, well… the Long Peace of 1945-2022 was a historical aberration after all.

    *Clown nose back on* – but at least we’ll revenge ourselves on them Russians for doing Brexit!

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