Today we’ll discuss the issue which has made everybody nervous since the very beginning,
but it became as relevant as ever after the speech of the British Minister of Defense.
Will there be a nation-wide mobilization in Russia?
Ben Wallace the British Defense Minister suggested – and this word “suggested” is really important here –
that on the parade on May 9 Vladimir Putin might announce “the world’s war against the Nazis”
with a real martial law status and nation-wide mobilization.
We should say here that it’s likely that the Minister is mistaken about the way how this “world’s war” might be announced.
Perhaps the Third Reich stylistics troubles him as well as any other European politician.
We live with Putin a bit longer and we’ve never heard any terrifying things from him in front of the huge crowd of soldiers.
The most terrible things were muttered under his nose while he read the piece of paper written by his speechwriter.
But in a nutshell the Minister’s hypothesis is based on the real situation.
If we ignore the possibility of using a nuclear weapon, Vladimir Putin has two options – to announce a nation-wide mobilization or to lose this war.
It hasn’t always been like this that there is a two-options choice.
But the situation has changed during the last month.
Even several weeks ago the Russian government had the third option – to make this war a low-intensity conflict.
They could arrange the second take on 2014-2015.
They could settle on the occupied territories and give them an uncertain status of unacknowledged republics
and reverse the war to the state it has been these 8 years – there is a war but not really.
They could have called a victory the new position of troops, have the entertainment shows back
and finally let Soloviev and Skabeeva have a good night’s sleep and take a shower.
What propaganda does the best is forgetting things.
Who remembers that saga with the Constitution corrections which were about to change the whole country’s life?
Just those unfortunate ones who tried to analyze that rubbish – like me.
And no one else remembers it though they’ve spent so much money for the PR-campaign for those corrections.
This option with low-intensity conflict could satisfy many people, including the Western allies of Ukraine.
Everything could be limited to some uninteresting fuss where people don’t die massively,
and the voters are not terrified by Bucha and don’t demand new sanctions.
Neither Ukraine, nor Russia achieved what they wanted in this war.
No one has the opportunity to change the game to its favor.
Everybody lost but there’s no need to admit it, everybody could arrange this “semi-retreat”.
This option was expected.
Well, we haven’t managed to achieve a brilliant geopolitical victory,
we can try later at a different place and in a different way.
Putin’s government did it many times – they met the obstacle, retreated, and found another way.
We don’t know if they had such thoughts but anyway the moment for maneuver was missed.
Ukraine is being armed better and better, its troops have achieved great success, and there’s no need for any compromises now, including territory loss.
Moreover, it’s politically impossible now.
Now the enemy is pushed away from the capital, and it showed its vulnerability.
The country is armed as it has never been before and it’s clear that it’s going to be just a counterattack with the liberation of occupied territories
and a military defeat of the opponent.
There would be no middle-ground agreement or compromise.
That means when Vladimir Putin completely exhausts his reserves, when his army’s potential dries out,
it won’t mean that the war will be at pause like 8 years ago, it will mean a counterattack and a military defeat.
And you can’t sugarcoat such lame defeat in any way.
The tone and the methods used by propaganda are also important.
The Ukrainian government and the political system were considered a circus show,
the Ukrainian army – a Zulu tribe armed with stones and spears.
And the Ukrainan people were shown like some "subhumans".
Propaganda thought that Ukraine was not an enemy you would be proud to overpower and ashamed to lose to.
It’s not even a state, just a historical misunderstanding.
To be kicked off from this “historical misunderstanding” having severe losses in the army which considered itself a competitor of the US army is such a shame.
All the ratings which became extremely high during this war will fade away so fast that it would be no surprise if people at power could go away together with those ratings.
And that's what's going to happen without mobilization sooner or later
(and it’s not years we’re talking about, but months and even weeks).
It’s not even about military logics, it's pure mathematics –
those forces Russia had by February 24 were net enough even then.
Second, they will end very soon, soldiers will be injured, killed, captured and morally or physically exhausted.
It’s not possible for the same people to fight endlessly.
Especially, if they don't understand why they are doing this.
And when the Ukrainian government realizes the enemy is exhausted there will be a counterattack which will make the Russian army lose.
In fact, the Russian government has been trying to recruit people for a while.
There is a huge campaign in the country hunting people for “3 months” military contracts.
But it’s clear it’s not effective enough.
They need hundreds of thousands of people in the front and millions in reserve for such war.
And you can’t fill those gaps with men from 40 miserable towns who are ready to escape from loan obligations and go to war, Mars, wherever.
Long story short, on the 10th week of the war in the beginning of May there is a simple choice – mobilization or defeat.
There is no “if”, it’s “when”.
At some point the armed Ukrainian troops will “digest” the Russian soldiers.
To understand the problem with mobilization you should remember two facts.
First, the official name of what’s going on.
How could you translate “special military operation” which the whole government obediently repeats from the bird language to the human language?
It means this – dear citizens, nothing is happening, your life is not changing, sit down in front of your TVs, the second season of an interesting series is starting.
Nothing is threatening you, you don’t have to participate, there won’t be much blood and it will be on the foreign territory.
There is a firm decision not to allow any troubling news.
Any news which could bother the viewers like the shootings of the Russian territories or military losses or the flagship’s wreckage
are barely mentioned on TV – somewhere between the success of import substitution and weather forecast.
Hiding the truth and promoting a “positive agenda” is a way to hold people in a different universe where there is no war
but there are civilians liberated from the Nazism.
It’s a summary of informational policy and the whole governmental policy too.
The second problem with mobilization is a social portrait of a Russian soldier
which we can imagine judging from the statistics of those who died and were captured.
75% of Russian citizens live in cities, 77% of citizens are ethnically Russian,
other ethnic groups, except for the Tatars and Ukrainians, are 1% or even less.
But those who die in this war in the name of Russia are mostly country people from national republics.
I mean, literally, from a social and ethnic point of view, it’s not Russia who is leading the war in Ukraine, it’s some other country which is completely different from Russia.
In this alternative Russia Dagestan should be from Kamchatka to the Ural Mountains with a population higher than in China,
and it should share the map with Buryatia only.
Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, or Novosibirsk, where an average Russian citizen lives, do not receive loads of corpses.
All the funerals silently take place in distant areas where journalists don’t usually go.
Both these facts compliment each other.
The citizens are protected from any troubling news, it nourishes the illusion of a normal life as if we are not at war with anyone.
At the same time, they don’t really fight with anyone. They don’t receive any death notifications. Some other country is at war – it’s the country the viewer of a federal TV doesn’t care about.
The problem is that nation-wide mobilization can’t be performed just in national republics.
In any case it will touch cities which will destroy the illusion of a peaceful life.
This is obvious, but problems don’t end here.
I have a separate video detailing the mobilization problems,
for example, there is one unobvious problem like the reaction of the military community.
All the used-to-be barmen and managers are not good soldiers, they could be sent right to the fronts just to waste the enemy’s ammunition.
The most obvious mobilization resources are those 1,5 million people who wear uniforms – like police and Rosgvardia.
Of course, they are not soldiers but at least they were in the army once and they pass some formal shooting and physical tests.
Those people who are supposed to be pillars of the regime, who should scare people away during the meetings or hunt the conscripts who don’t want to join the army,
or at least launch criminal cases against people who take photos in front of a church.
very likely will go to war and never pay off their privileged mortgages.
It’s not exactly a safe experiment.
Therefore, a real massive mobilization is very unlikely. It’s not impossible but still unlikely.
But it doesn’t mean that the mobilization itself is unlikely.
It’s quite possible but in a different form.
It’s possible that we’ll see a word-by-word summary of coronavirus restrictions.
During the pandemic in Russia there was no emergency situation or any other restrictions on a federal level.
The government isolated itself from making any decisions, or responsibility, or telling people the truth.
Federal government made a gift to people with this mysterious and absolutely unlawful “regime of paid stay-at-home days”,
and let the local governors make all the real decisions about quarantine or vaccination.
It’s likely we’ll see something like this.
We’ll see the federal government issuing some uncertain and useless document like “simplified procedure of mobilization during the special operation”
which doesn’t bind anyone in any way or make anyone responsible.
And later they will do what they usually do when they want voter turnout, or election fraud or anything else.
The governors will receive plans on how to provide fake volunteers to the army.
First of all, it would be the governors of far-away, rural and depressive regions – of “electoral abnormalities”
with extremely controlled management apparatus.
We can definitely say that if it concerns Moscow, Saint-Petersburg or other cities with a million population, they would be the last.
The governors will share those plans with plants’ executive managers and budgetary institutions. And then they’ll think how to solve this problem
and how to provide those 5 volunteers from a production department or 10 volunteers from a mine.
They will use carrots and sticks, whatever it takes – from threats to start a criminal case for treason
to promises of incredible salaries and heart-to-heart conversations about how you are valued by your colleagues and that you shouldn’t disappoint them.
This arrangement was created for other things. It’s good for faking protocols during elections.
But I’m not sure this will work in a life-or-death matter.
Visiting a patriotic concert or being fired is one thing but being sent to war or being fired is completely different.
Nobody prepared this machine for such problems.
However, if we consider our previous experience, this system, a system of administrative intimidation of people who depend on the government (it’s good there are millions of them),
is more probable than formal announcement on nation-wide mobilization.
Vladimir Putin who suddenly takes responsibility, admits the truth, doesn’t beat around the bush or cheats, but acts as a commander-in-chief?
We haven’t seen anything like this for 22 years, and most likely – we won’t.
But mobilization without mobilization for a war which is not a war, when someone’s son, father or husband dies under Sloviansk
not because Putin ordered him but because his chief on the bus station asked him to,
when there is no one responsible and no one to blame because everybody did it voluntarily, when there is no official campaign,
but there are loads of heart-to-heart conversations and nobody is forcing anyone but everybody understands how this works –
we have seen it many times and there’s no reason to think we won’t see it again.
If an out-of-law mobilization through the administrative vertical happens, there is something people inside this machine should understand.
If you work for a state enterprise, budgetary institution or you are a student, it’s necessary to understand
that everything concerning elections, meetings, and any other forms of power abuse work because of fear and ignorance.
Any manager who receives such a plan understands that his threats and conversations are against the law.
This is where all the hysterics, shouting and angry faces come from.
When people do what they should do, they don’t shout, frighten, or chastise anyone. They just sign an order.
And if you violate it, you’ll be punished.
Any manager understands that the plans are made by one person, his actions will be checked by another person and the third person will start a criminal case.
And all those people don’t even know each other.
You can’t refer to a call from city administration, and a detective together with a prosecutor have their own plans, goals, and numbers.
They should detect violations and find those who are guilty.
No governor will defend a factory’s managing director, or no university’s president will defend a dean.
And if they overdo a bit and will be noticed by forces, it will be their own problem.
We’ve heard a lot of threats to fire people or punish them for refusing to do something political,
but we know just a couple of cases when they were really fired and reinstated through court afterwards.
It works even for soldiers.
We can see a lot of real hysterics from the commanders who threaten the soldiers who refused with all possible punishments.
Each time it seems the poor guy will be hit in the face at the very least.
But nothing like this happens because any major (even the dumbest one) knows
that he has a plan to send as many people to Ukraine as possible. But a military prosecutor has a plan too – to imprison as many majors as possible.
And the prosecutor doesn’t care about all those unofficial recommendations from his commanders because he has his own commanders and recommendations.
No soldier who refused was physically punished, nobody was shot in the backyard, nobody was prosecuted by law.
And those are soldiers, even contract soldiers, sometimes even officers.
Remember – you are just a civilian in an officially peaceful time.
You don’t have to do anything.
They can pay with your life during this hidden mobilization, but only if you buy this performance played by your superiors.
You mustn’t do it. Your refusal will have no real consequences – even your manager won’t be really angry with you.
Tomorrow will be a new day and new tasks. If you agree, it might cost you your life.
So, if someone asks you to go to war and die there, don’t agree. Find a way to refuse.
You can refuse even directly. Most likely, it won’t cost you anything. Or you can find another way, and, please, persuade your colleagues to refuse.
It’s not clear why you should die there. Anyway, there is no need to die for no reason. And here we are talking exactly about dying for no purpose at all.