In a non-embedable video, the YouTuber formerly know as The Russian Dude announced that he had been called up for military service as part of Putin’s “partial mobilization” to throw more cannon fodder into the Ukrainian meatgrinder. (I’m pretty sure that’s an important decision point in why he’s now known as The Canadian Dude.)
Oddly enough, all his male friends received conscription notices as well.
Commenters have long stated that Putin doesn’t want to declare a General Mobilization, because under Soviet Russian law, that requires an actual declaration of war, something still lacking in Vlad’s Special Military Operation.
Now this is not even a theory, only conjecture based on a single data point, but what if Putin is actually carrying out a General Mobilization of all eligible males of military age while calling it limited mobilization? It’s not like Putin’s war machine hasn’t already committed more heinous crimes, or that Russia has an independent press capable of calling him on it any more.
Maybe Putin wants to roll the dice on one final spring push for Kiev, putting a million men under arms to launch a massive attack, relying on the Russian doctrine of quantity having a quality of its own to final snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Like I said, conjecture only, but it certainly doesn’t make any less sense than the multiple bungling stupidities Russia has committed in the war…
Tags: Foreign Policy, Military, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War
Let me preface this by saying I have no expertise in military matters.
That said, I’m wondering about ways this not only doesn’t work, it backfires in a big way.
One million soldiers: how many uniforms? How many officers to command them? How many rifles? How many bullets per soldier?
How many of these guys figure, if I’m going to march into gunfire, why not march into gunfire from the so-and-sos who are pushing me into it? If these new soldiers have no weapons, how poor is their motivation? And if they’ve just been given guns and bullets, how do they calculate their odds?
And then there is the surrender scenario.
The one scenario that seems impossible is that this million-man army will be adequately trained and equipped. Hence my scenarios.
What am I missing?
Martin: What are you missing?
Not a lot that I can see. The only two things I’d add are:
– Logistics. And extra million-odd men take a lot of feeding, which becomes increasingly difficult as they move closer to the front.
– Artillery. This has been Russia’s ace card, and as seen in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria, integral to modern Russian military doctrine. But a year later, with ammunition usage (it appears they are using pretty old stuff now), equipment losses, wear and tear coupled with poor maintenance, and Ukraine’s own improved artillery capability from captured equipment plus modern Western equipment, these new guys won’t have anywhere near the same artillery support. If it failed as a strategy with their best troops, its hard to see the newbs doing better.
Russia already has terrible population demographics. Killing off (or driving into exile) so many of Russia’s young men, is one of Putin’s greatest failures as a national leader. He appears to be in full “taking them down with me” mode.
Vlad was clearly trying to push (probably because he also wanted to believe his own b.s.) that he was re-enacting 1944, with the Russians as the Russians and the Ukrainians as the Germans – but he was actually re-enacting 1941 (from the opposite direction) with the Russians as the Germans and the Ukrainians as… the Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Russians.
The big problem for Vlad is that it’s not 1944 in any way for Mother Russia now. “Father” Stalin took advantage of the huge post-civil-war baby boom in the early 1920s for his endless supply of cannon fodder. But today’s Russia is in demographic collapse (Russia’s population today is less than the island of Java) and he just doesn’t have enough men (particularly YOUNG men) to build up an effective million-man army just on those grounds. When you add in that Russia no longer has much of a technology base (brain drain) and not much of a manufacturing base (the Brezhnev-era rot just kept… rotting) there won’t be either quality or quantity in any weaponry. (Anyone seen any of those T-14 supertanks around? It’s been eight years, where are they?) No flood of T-34s in the offing – no men, no technology, no equipment.
Oh, and no logistics. Back in 1944, all of the Red Army’s logistical needs were being met by… the good ol’ US of A. Not this time…
Vlad’s Russia is a ramshackle shadow of its former self. Vlad’s big mistake was actually trying to DO something, and thus demonstrating that ugly fact for all to see (and against which to recalculate).
BTW, something else comes to mind and might explain Vlad’s mind on recycling old Soviet events.
Vlad also might be thinking about early 1940, and it fits the “massive cannon fodder” mentality. “Father” Stalin had attacked Finland in November 1939, expecting a walkover (sound familiar?). After being disastrously stopped (sound familiar?), “Father” Stalin needed to settle matters before spring and massive international effort (in the works) to help Finland. So he indeed just got a HUGE army together and threw it at the Finns, and despite huge casualties was able to breach the “Mannerheim Line” and force the Finns to agree to terms.
Vlad doesn’t have the cannon fodder supply that “Father” Stalin had though…
All of the above are great observations. I’ll add a couple to the lists.
Artillery — gun tubes are getting shot out. Replacements from maintenance stocks are probably limited. Replacement will pull gun from action. Also, ammunition stocks are already being rapidly depleted. Old stocks are less reliable and prone to malfunction (dud rounds, misfires, and premature detonation in the breach). Rocket artillery is limited by declining ammunition stocks.
Logistics — transportation of supplies is becoming more difficult. Wheeled transport has been targeted by the Ukrainian Army. Russians are using more civilian vehicles for military purposes (commercial busses, “Scooby Do” vans, panel trucks, etc.). These will not survive battlefield conditions. Reliance upon railroads limits supply flexibility and provides targets for Ukrainian artillery and Spec Ops efforts.
Winter — both sides live in a challenging cold environment. However, urbanization has changed how both sides cope. Both populations are not necessarily hardened to difficult outdoor conditions. Ukrainians are supplied with Western winter kit (Gore-Tex, etc.). Similar equipment may not be readily available to the Mobicks because of well-documented corruption in the Russian system. Again, logistics rears it’s ugly head.
All-in-all, I’m glad to be a distant observer rather than a participant.
Russian was buying artillery shells from North Korea. Mind you, NK Army have been stockpiling artillery shells since the Korean War, so some of the shells they’re getting may very well be 60 years old. If they cannot replenish something as simple as artillery shells themselves, fundamental to their entire combat doctrine, just how bad is their entire supply? I high recommend Perun’s ongoing trilogy on the war in Ukraine:
Corruption https://youtu.be/i9i47sgi-V4
Lies: https://youtu.be/Fz59GWeTIik
Forthcoming: Politics
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The other thing that the Russians are forgetting vis-a-vis it not being 1939-45 any more is the amount of sheer complexity modern war has injected into even basic infantry tasks and missions.
1939 Soviet troops had to master, at the basic level, very few things that didn’t carry over from civil life. Even the weapons were simpler. Today? Oh, holy crap… Wait until you’ve tried to consistently zero and maintain night vision devices, radios, and all the rest of that stuff we’re handing out to every single squad, these days. It literally takes you years to learn all that crap, and even longer before you’ve gotten to the point where it’s all at a usable level of skill.
And, this is where Russia is even worse off than anyone else: No NCOs. No mid-level guys, below NCO, either. You can’t run a modern army on new conscripts and a tiny leavening of officers. At. All.
I had a couple of experiences doing just that, and I’m here to tell you, it’s absolutely not doable, if you want to go to war and not kill half your people doing on-the-job-training. I can put myself into the feet of those Russian junior lieutenants very easily, being as I once had fate and circumstance gift me an entire squad of fresh-from-training privates. No experienced senior privates or specialists, and just me (Staff Sergeant) and a Sergeant trying to run a squad and do missions while I was also filling in as a platoon sergeant…
You have no idea what that’s like, in the middle of winter in Korea, during the last real Team Spirit exercise. Total ‘effing madness; you’d issue an order, they’d all look at you like they knew what you were talking about, you’d turn your back to go do something essential, like attend an operations order, and then you’d come back to find your truck looking like it lost a fight with a pack of spiders, ‘cos they couldn’t figure out how to put up camouflage by themselves. It was like running a litter of puppies, all enthusiastic and shitting all over everything, everywhere. I wish I could relate to you how that first six months went, but the counseling I underwent afterwards has successfully blocked a lot of those memories out…
You don’t run a modern military the way the Russians are trying to. It’s not possible: You either have trained, experienced troops on hand, doing their jobs without supervision and without micromanagement, or you’re going to lose most of them the first time they run up against even a slightly competent enemy. And, after the last 8-9 years of OJT the Russians have been giving the Ukrainians, they’re not exactly in the “slightly competent” category; I’d put them up as giving a good run for your money with damn near anyone outside of the Israelis, as far as second-tier military forces go.
The Russians are going to get gang-raped, the rest of this winter. It won’t be pretty, either. I think you’re going to see shed-loads, literally, of Russian mobiks surrendering just to get in where it’s warm.
[…] only see references to Russia considering it. (Unless my speculation that Russia was carrying out a full mobilization under the guise of a partial mobilization was on the […]