Russia mobilises - consequences and reactions

[strung out]

I figured this was worth having a thread of its own, to track and talk about Russia's 'partial' mobilisation in action, and the consequences politically and amongst the civilian population, particularly its effect on various demographics, minorities, etc.

Today has seen plenty of videos surfacing of men going off to war, having been conscripted, as well as more videos of airports and border checkpoints, with queues of people trying to flee before getting their conscription notice.



Reports of male students being taken out of classes to be mobilised, arrested protestors against the war being sent to the front line, and people who zero military experience whatsoever being handed their call-up notices.

Utterly grim, and likely to have little effect on the eventual outcome of the war in Ukraine other than prolonging and adding to the death inflicted on innocent people by Putin.

 

[Supine]

Good thread here. Posted shortly before it happened i think.

Thread by @kamilkazani on Thread Reader App

@kamilkazani: Regarding mobilisation, Putin can declare it, indeed. But it will be a risky decision. The USSR maintained a massive infrastructure for the total mobilisation which has been mostly dismantled in post-S...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

[Tanya1982]

This is very sad. A 29 year old has had to flee, and leave his pregnant wife behind for now. He doesn't know when he'll see her again, if he'll ever set foot in Russia again, and will miss the birth of his child - whichhe describes as 'the most important day of his life'. He hopes to cross the border into Kazakhstan tonight.

‘I will cross the border tonight’: Russians flee after news of draft

Border guards cite an ‘exceptional’ number of Russians leaving after ‘partial mobilisation’ announcement

www.theguardian.com

I hope he makes it out safely, and his wife can join him ASAP. Conscription is a wicked thing to inflict on people.

 

[bcuster]

 

[SpookyFrank]

Drafting anti-war protestors.

The people running all this are not very bright are they?

 

[Pickman's model]

Drafting anti-war protestors.

The people running all this are not very bright are they?

Because you think they'll spread anti-war sentiment? Tbh I doubt they'll be allowed near contract soldiers

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Can’t verify this whatsoever, but if correct, kin ell!

 

[strung out]

Just anecdotal for now, but reports of total mobilisation in Russia's far east, much softer in the bigger western cities.



Putin dishing up a side order of ethnic cleansing with his genocidal war.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Just anecdotal for now, but reports of total mobilisation in Russia's far east, much softer in the bigger western cities.



Putin dishing up a side order of ethnic cleansing with his genocidal war.

Yeah figures, fuck the minorities and poorest and drag them to war.

 

[Yossarian]

Drafting anti-war protestors.

The people running all this are not very bright are they?

They're sending a message about what's going to happen to people who oppose the war and I'm sure the Russian military will be able to find jobs for them that don't involve combat, or being issued a gun they could shoot themselves in the foot with - cleaning the toilets at conscript induction centers maybe, or clearing minefields without equipment.

 

[chilango]

What's the Russian for "fragging"?

 

[The39thStep]

What's the Russian for "fragging"?

Both the Ukrainians and Russians must have a word for it

Five dead in Ukraine after national guardsman opens fire at military factory

Police detain 21-year-old suspect after shooting at missile facility in Dnipro that left five others injured

www.theguardian.com

Mutinous Russian troops ran over their own commander, say western officials

Officials describe reported incident during fighting in Ukraine as sign of ‘morale challenges’ faced by invading forces

www.theguardian.com

 

[SpookyFrank]

Can’t verify this whatsoever, but if correct, kin ell!

So bizarre that Russia is in this state when every guerilla army and tuppeny-ha'penny warlord in every corner of the planet has had AK47's coming out their ears ever since they invented the bloody things. I suppose those would mostly have been the Chinese knock offs though.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

So bizarre that Russia is in this state when every guerilla army and tuppeny-ha'penny warlord in every corner of the planet has had AK47's coming out their ears ever since they invented the bloody things. I suppose those would mostly have been the Chinese knock offs though.

That’s the question I asked myself, & others on that thread the same - I suspect they did, but like everything else that’d been in storage for donks failed. Only have to look back at tyres on vehicles at the very beginning! 1000’s of rusty AK’s.

 

[frogwoman]

very good rundown of the situation (english subtitles)

 

[bluescreen]

very good rundown of the situation (english subtitles)

Chilling. I see it's had nearly 1million views already.
Can you tell us something more about Maxim Katz (how reliable is wiki?) where he is based now and who his likely audience is? How many people in Russia will be seeing this?

 

[frogwoman]

He's a bit of a liberal and tbh quite naive wrt his views on the west but when it comes to the war in Ukraine he's done some good stuff, he's been making these videos for a Russian speaking audience daily since February. I don't know how many people inside Russia are watching but many (most?) people will have VPNs and if you look on YouTube there's actually a lot of content made by people within the country. The ads on his show are also clearly made for a Russian audience as well.

I don’t know where he is now tbh, he looks like he's in a hotel room

 

[bcuster]

future elite Russian mounted infantry

 

[kebabking]

So bizarre that Russia is in this state when every guerilla army and tuppeny-ha'penny warlord in every corner of the planet has had AK47's coming out their ears ever since they invented the bloody things. I suppose those would mostly have been the Chinese knock offs though.

That’s the question I asked myself, & others on that thread the same - I suspect they did, but like everything else that’d been in storage for donks failed. Only have to look back at tyres on vehicles at the very beginning! 1000’s of rusty AK’s.

I think the Chinese knock-offs thing is likely to be a player - there was always a hierarchy of AK's, the East German produced ones were the most desirable, and the most expensive, with the cheap Chinese ones at the bottom. The Russian ones were only marginally better...

One of the things that has been noteworthy has been that we expected them to follow the Sov model of units being put onto the front line, used to exhaustion, rotated out and reconstituted with new everything - casualty replacements, uniforms, equipment, rifles, absolutely everything - but there's been little of that. It's all be piecemeal and fairly haphazard, with some units - not cut off, not out on the arse end of nowhere, but well within the logistics chain - with a shocking state, and lack of, equipment, food, fuel and ammunition, and in place for months on end.

The rifles thing is bizarre - but it seems real, to the point where Russian state TV is making comments about second world war rifles and helmets - we wonder if it's something like a lack of cleaning kits, or barrels being flogged off for scrap metal. You can see where the budget goes, if they can whip out T-62's and 1943 rifles, while the 'reactive armour' on much more modern tanks turns out to be rubber blocks...

 

[ska invita]

Supposedly Putin has already been conscripting Russian-speaking Ukrainians within the Donbas for a while now
Economist link

Russia is forcing Ukrainian conscripts into battle

Locals are trying to help them escape

www.economist.com

"Since the start of the war Russian forces and leaders in the occupied “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk are said to have mobilised some 100,000 men. Ukrainian officials say 25,000 conscripts from the occupied territories have been killed or are missing in action, an improbably high figure. Russian sources mention about 3,000 dead, an improbably low one. But data suggest that Ukrainians from the separatist republics are dying at a higher rate than troops from Russia. By June 2022 more than half of the original members of the Donetsk militia had been killed or wounded in combat, reckons Britain’s defence ministry.

Ukrainian officials say that conscripts from the “people’s republics” are sent into battle ahead of others, to draw artillery fire and force the Ukrainians to disclose their positions. “It’s very convenient for Russia, because they don’t lose their troops,” says Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. “It’s Ukrainians killing Ukrainians.”

Pro-Russian sympathies run deep in Donetsk and Luhansk. Thousands of the men Russia has deployed to the eastern front are loyalists who have seen action frequently since 2014. Many of them have welcomed the chance to fight Russia’s war. But interviews with relatives and activists suggest that most of the new conscripts are unprepared, underequipped and unwilling. “He told me many of them did not know how to use weapons, and nobody wanted to fight,” says Alina, a woman whose brother, a schoolteacher from Donetsk, also ended up in Kharkiv. “Their commanders told them they would be shot if they turned back.”

 

[bcuster]

 

[Kaka Tim]

ISW has a pretty comprehensive of analysis of the mobilisation -

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-22

​

• The Kremlin’s heavy-handed approach to partial mobilization may successfully meet the Kremlin’s internal quota of mobilized personnel, but is unlikely to generate effective soldiers and is prompting significant domestic backlash for little gain.
• The Kremlin is openly not adhering to its promised conditions for partial mobilization.
• Kremlin quotas will likely force local officials to mobilize men regardless of their military status and will likely incentivize the mobilization of ethnically non-Russian and immigrant communities at a disproportionate rate.

Does look like they are doing it in a way that is guaranteed to provoke anger and resistance across the country. And having an influx of thousands resentful and utterly unmotivated troops is surely not going to lead to very effective troops - and who are likely to surrender, run or mutiny at the first opportunity

Edited to add the correct link!

 

[frogwoman]

I remember this ad to vote for Putin from when I was living there

 

[Supine]

Errr, can anyone see a problem with this idea?

 

[frogwoman]

A woman working at a military recruitment centre shouts at a group of men for not wanting to fight and die in a war.

 

[Tanya1982]

A woman working at a military recruitment centre shouts at a group of men for not wanting to fight and die in a war.

Disgusting behaviour. Somewhat equivalent to a man standing outside an abortion clinic screaming at women who enter.

 

[two sheds]

Slight aside there was a video on reddit I saw yesterday showing a woman who'd taken some cunt's sign who was protesting about abortion. He followed her videoing and shouting "she's stolen my sign, where are the police, arrest her she's stolen my sign". Policeman turned up and arrested her. Video was called something like "Entitled woman arrested for stealing sign".

Lot of people going on saying Ah well yes I'm for abortion rights but there's free speech in the US and she did steal his sign and the policeman was being very reasonable. I looked for it again today to give a mouthful of abuse but it seems to have been taken down.

So she'll likely get a criminal record for stealing said cunt's sign. Judge will doubtless be very reasonable as he fines or imprisons her if she ever comes up in court. Stealing to me is taking something of value, she should have charged cunt who was actually the entitled one for disposing of his toxic waste. So fucking angry.

 

[Dystopiary]

A woman working at a military recruitment centre shouts at a group of men for not wanting to fight and die in a war.

I like this reply, "I don’t watch TV and that’s why I’m staying literate."

 

[Dystopiary]

Meanwhile in Belarus:


and yet the Lukashenka regime still blatantly denies being involved:


links:
one
two

 

[bcuster]

elite Russian ground forces practice hand-to-hand combat: