"Putin visits the Hague"
Posted on 03/26/2023 8:19:33 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Russia is still cutting deals with China, Iran, and North Korea to make sure they don’t run out of missiles and ammunition, but there’s one thing that they can’t import in any significant numbers. What they’re running short of are soldiers. Moscow doesn’t publish precise figures, but one recent estimate puts the Russian death toll in Ukraine at more than 70,000. Others suspect that the true figure is closer to 100,000. And then there are the tens of thousands who survived but were too grievously injured to return to combat. With the ranks thinning so badly, Vladimir Putin has launched a new recruiting campaign. State television is running advertisements offering significant cash bonuses for volunteers and recruiters are cold-calling college students and the unemployed. But if the numbers don’t climb dramatically, Putin may need to declare another mobilization of reservists, something he has been trying to avoid. (Associated Press)
Advertisements promise cash bonuses and enticing benefits. Recruiters are making cold calls to eligible men. Enlistment offices are working with universities and social service agencies to lure students and the unemployed.
A new campaign is underway this spring across Russia, seeking recruits to replenish its troops for the war in Ukraine.
As fighting grinds on in Ukrainian battlegrounds like Bakhmut and both sides prepare for counteroffensives that could cost even more lives, the Kremlin’s war machine badly needs new recruits.
To put this in perspective, the number of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine thus far is more than one-fifth the total number of troops in the United States Army. They’ve been able to recruit as many as 10,000 former Afghan soldiers (who ironically used to fight for us) with promises of citizenship and good pay. But that well has been drying up and it hasn’t gotten them anywhere near the level required to replace all of the combat deaths over the past year.
This is turning into a serious problem for Putin. Every male under the age of 65 is technically part of the Russian reserve forces and eligible to be called up. But when the last reserve mobilization was announced, countless Russians fled the country to avoid being sent to the front lines. The same thing will likely happen if a second mobilization is announced.
Targeting unemployed workers and college students with recruiting calls probably seems like a smart move. But this is still Russia that we’re talking about. If the person answering the phone doesn’t seem eager to take the recruiter up on their offer, it might be “suggested” that bad things could happen if they decline. But will this strategy get the Russian army back to its full staffing levels? That’s a lot of phone calls to make.
One other disturbing piece of news out of the Kremlin showed up last night, but it doesn’t involve moving troops. Putin has ordered nuclear weapons to be moved into Belarus.
Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, marking the first time since the mid-1990s that Moscow will have based such arms outside the country.
Putin made the announcement at a time of growing tensions with the West over the Ukraine war and as some Russian commentators speculate about possible nuclear strikes.
Analysts quoted in the CNBC report describe this move as being “significant.” Russia hasn’t put any nukes in other countries for decades. And Belarus borders Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all NATO members. From the beginning of the invasion, Putin has made vague threats about the destruction of NATO capitals if any of his “red lines” are crossed.
What’s worrisome about this move is that it’s coming at the same time as the troop shortage discussed above. This could just be more posturing to try to get the west to back down on its support of Ukraine. But if Vladimir Putin truly grows desperate and suspects he could lose this war entirely, would he take things to a worst-case scenario? Is he really that crazy? I’m afraid we can’t rule out that possibility entirely at this point.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
The US is apparently dropping its woke recruitment ads featuring woke, trash recruits in favor of more traditional ads featuring what you would expect: fit people, not crazy, unbalanced people, storming the beaches at Normandy, etc.
I hope so. Then we can get back to unhindered child trafficking, sex trafficking, money laundering and make new viruses to unleash. This hold up is getting old.
Q - where’s the largest Ukrainian population outside of Ukraine?
A - Alberta
don’t you mean 3 million Russians who were living in Ukraine?
good, hope more do the same ... if they had all done that in the beginning, there would be no war
Whoa! HAHAHA! I duntinoso Quixdraw.
There's at least a 0.04% chance, the same percentage as CO2 in China's air. The precautionary principle requires proceeding under the doomsday scenario. Pessimism is most appropriate when the cost of failure is unimaginably high.
Doesn't say how much or if it pays.
20K for your 4 hours, but 10% for the big guy.
Winnipeg, Manitoba has many. Huge orthodox Uke Church on the way to ft Sask though. You should talk to some.
In any case, most of the Ukrainians in Canada are third or fourth generation and those people emigrated while the Czar was still on the throne, in the decades 1890 to 1910. Most of them have no real connection to whatever happened in Ukraine under Soviet rule or since the 1991 independence. They may still have relatives in Ukraine, and keep in touch with some of them; others have lost all contact as emigrants of that vintage often do. I was born in the UK and came here as a child in 1957, of the relatives that my parents knew well, I only know one or two and have no connections with the rest.
There may be bad things that were happening in Ukraine before this war began, but I doubt that all the people of Ukraine were deeply involved in them, any more than all the people of America were associated with the Mafia or Al Capone. Well now we do have some Ukrainians in Canada who arrived since 2022, thanks to Vladimir Putin. How long they stay depends on what happens to their homeland.
That is exactly what is wrong with Ukraine. Once you declared half of the population Russians and invited them to leave, they do, and take their land with them.
“What they’re running short of are soldiers. Moscow doesn’t publish precise figures, but one recent estimate puts the Russian death toll in Ukraine at more than 70,000. Others suspect that the true figure is closer to 100,000. And then there are the tens of thousands who survived but were too grievously injured to return to combat.”
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Figures above must have been compiled back in late 2022.
Current number is over 170,000 with >1,000 soldier lost per DAY.
The black actor was accused of domestic violence and the ad was pulled.
Update on Russian military operations in Ukraine for March 27, 2023;
- Russian forces are not only encircling the fortified cities of Bakhmut and Avdeevka, it is increasingly utilizing its military aviation to bomb fortified positions;
- Increased use of Russian military aviation may indicate an irreversible deterioration of Ukrainian air defense networks and may continue to expand, accelerating the demilitarization of Ukraine;
- Ukraine's offensive may be directed toward the south or east, however, Russia has created extensive defense networks in both directions;
- Because of the West's dwindling stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, Ukraine's offensive, no matter how successful, will end with Ukraine unable to sustain military operations or maintain territorial gains;
- Russia bringing in older tanks and makeshift mobile gun platforms may be used to eliminate weaknesses in Russian defenses, saturating the battlefield with additional firepower to prevent Ukrainian forces from making it through zones of fire;
- Russian military industrial output is greater than Ukraine's Western sponsors, and therefore gives Russia the advantage in shaping the conflict after Ukraine's offensive ends;
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