The Kremlin’s Very Russian Partial Mobilization

When Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization earlier this week, there were widespread doubts — including from me — that inducting thousands of untrained or barely trained, unmotivated men into the Russian army would do much to turn the tide in Ukraine. These doubts are now being validated.

The Kremlin has publicly announced that it will call up as many as 300,000 men. It has said that these men will be reservists, soldiers who have already completed their national service and have moved on to civilian life. But there are numerous reports that entirely untrained men are being drafted into the army.

The war is likely to be fought by Russians without friends in high places. The New York Times reports today that:

Russian men with certain white-collar jobs in banking, I.T. and telecommunications will not be called up to join the war effort, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Friday, after companies complained that the draft announced by President Vladimir V. Putin could badly affect their ability to operate.

The statement appeared aimed at addressing widespread concern in the business community about the call-up.

Stories like this can only fuel that swirling discontent that might eventually induce the Russian street to rise up over the unfairness of this situation and threaten Putin’s regime. In the meantime, this will be a very Russian partial mobilization, complete with chaos, cruelty, and corruption. Rob Lee, a researcher of the Russian military and a former U.S. Marine, noticed a report from Meduza, the Russian- and English-language Latvian news source, that claims that Russian authorities “recommended keeping recruitments to a minimum” in regional capitals, such that conscription would instead fall on Russians “in rural areas, where there is no media, no opposition, and more support [for the war].”

Notably, Meduza also cited unnamed Russian officials who said that the Kremlin plans to call up as many as 1.2 million conscripts, a number I doubt the Russians could raise and field, even if they wanted to.

However many men reach the training grounds, they seem unlikely to be there for very long before being sent into battle. A video is circulating online of recalcitrant and unruly conscripts being briefed on the plan:

Other unconfirmed videos show long lines of men heading to the drill fields or arriving drunk and belligerent after being conscripted.

https://twitter.com/hnsamona/status/1573367500968177664

Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in chaos.

However poorly these men are trained and led, they will be even more poorly equipped. Russian matériel losses in Ukraine have been catastrophic. Michael Weiss and James Rushton report that, in one analysis, “Russia has lost 1,183 tanks and 1,304 infantry fighting vehicles since its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.”

I don’t doubt that Russia can scrounge up enough small arms and shabby, mothballed uniforms to equip the incoming conscripts, but modern high-intensity wars are not fought and won with AK-47s. And, according to Weiss and Rushton, “Russia’s losses are burning through its reserve vehicles,” as well.

Very old T-62M tanks have been increasingly appearing, as Russia runs out of newer, more capable tanks. Using these tanks will also exacerbate the Kremlin’s manpower shortages: The T-62 does not feature an autoloader, which automatically loads shells into the main gun, unlike more modern Russian types, so it needs a four-man crew, compared to the three-man crews required by T-72, T-80, or T-90 models.

These conscripts are dead men walking — mere cannon fodder to protect the Kremlin’s vanity and pride.

We shouldn’t overlook the human tragedy. Though these men are being sent to fight and die for a bad cause, they have families and loved ones. While Vladimir Putin sits in the Kremlin planning his murderous little war, killing Ukrainians and threatening the West with nuclear annihilation, the blood will run deep through Russia as well. Many thousands of sons and fathers and brothers are leaving, never to come home. War is always hell. Unnecessary wars of conquest are criminal.

Meanwhile, as Russian state media trumpets that a Ukrainian attack is imminent, Russia is beginning to hold sham referenda in the occupied regions of Ukraine. According to the Times,

The ballots being distributed had one question: Do you wish to secede from Ukraine and create an independent state that will enter the Russian Federation?

“We will be able to make our historic choice,” Kirill Stremousov, a leader of the Russian occupation administration in the southern region of Kherson, said in a statement.

I’ll leave you with this — Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church giving his blessing to Putin’s mobilization.