Ekaterina Limanskaya09:52, 06/28/24

Russians are finally losing interest in a quick death in war.

Military bloggers and private soldiers are increasingly posting detailed videos of horrific conditions on the front lines . Personnel changes at the Russian Defense Ministry also hint at an official admission that things are not going quite as Kremlin propaganda claims, Rob writes in  The Hill .

One of the most convincing evidence of Russian dissatisfaction with the war is a billboard that recently appeared in St. Petersburg. “The Hero City has its heroes,” the advertisement says. People are offered to enlist in the army and receive a colossal payment of 1.3 million rubles, which is equivalent to the annual salary of the average Russian.

“But what is especially important about this proposal is that the billboard appeared in Russia’s second city, which, like Moscow, is largely free of coffins and prostheses,” the publication analyzes.

The horrors of war are overwhelmingly concentrated in the poor provinces of Russia, where 1.3 million rubles amount to several years’ salary. This shows that the Kremlin is desperate for recruits.

More importantly, two years ago, Russians were offered 200,000 rubles to register. The price of a recruit has increased by 650 percent! Even taking inflation into account, this is a huge increase, indicating that the demand for soldiers is high and the supply is low. 

“In other words, Russians are increasingly reluctant to serve. With more than 535,000 killed and wounded and more than 1,000 daily casualties, it’s time for Russians to realize that the regime is using them as cannon fodder,” The Hill writes.

This change of mood, according to the newspaper, bodes bad news for the regime and for Putin himself. Their working assumption was that Russians love punishment; that they would blindly go to their deaths, like sheep to the slaughter. Enthusiasm for the war was high for several months after the invasion, but it waned after Russia’s humiliating withdrawal from the Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kherson regions a few months later.

Since mid-2023, the front has barely moved in any direction, and Russian casualties have almost doubled, from approximately 600–800 people per day to at least 1,200–1,400. Putin, as the building writes, is happy to trade the lives of Russians for a few square miles of Ukrainian land. However, Russians seem to be finally waking up and expressing their opposition to the senseless death.

Putin and his comrades found themselves in a hopeless situation. If they stop mobilizing, they will not be able to defeat Ukraine. But if they forcibly mobilize soldiers, they will increase the incentives to desert.

“We don’t know when the tipping point for rational flight will come, but we can make two guesses,” the publication writes.

First, the longer the war goes on, the more likely it is that Russians will refuse to fight. As the supply of volunteers dries up and forced mobilization proves counterproductive, conditions for overburdened frontline soldiers will become unbearable. Time is certainly not on Putin’s side.

And second, if Russia suffers a major defeat, the soldiers will likely save their skins by abandoning ship. Such a defeat could be anything from a Ukrainian march on Moscow (highly unlikely) to another forced withdrawal of troops from part of the occupied territory (quite likely). Losing all or part of Crimea would be especially demoralizing.

“The moral for Ukraine and its allies is simple: Hold on. The Russians, who are expected to die, refuse to die,” The Hill concludes.

(C)UNIAN 2024