Punditry StaffJust because Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of some 300,000 Russians to prosecute his illegal war does not mean it won’t happen without the usual structural problems the world witnessed on the battlefields in Ukraine. It’s the same unmotivated people, the same dysfunctional systems, and the same war machine pretending to be a superpower. This Russian mobilization from hell is not without its dose of complications only two days into its unfortunate activation and implementation.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) published on its website the following ominous warning:
These pre-existing fundamental problems are already showing up in the Russian rounding of recruits to send to the front.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Many western military experts have weighed recently with their analysis about the Ukraine war and their findings have re-calibrated our thinking as to the potency of the Russian war machine. Besides the usual equipment failures, to include such basic things as using the wrong tires on their trucks, Putin’s military infrastructure and command and control have been deemed incapable of conducting a modern war with any success if it met an equally equipped army on the battlefields.
Furthermore, based on the assessment of these military experts, the command structure of the Russian army follows its political structure in the sense that decisions go up the ladder to be determined by very few people. Commanders on the fields have very little discretion to change plans or adjust to the realities on the ground, which postpones urgent defensive measures to protect materials and personnel.
These pre-existing fundamental problems are already showing up in the Russian rounding of recruits to send to the front.
ISW continues in its same apocalyptic analysis:
… how will they [Russian women] behave when their loved ones come back to them frozen and slowly decomposing.
THE IMMORAL MORALITY OF MOTIVATION
How does Russia expect to motivate such a hodgepodge of recruits is beyond us. Old men are old, students are anti-war mostly, and bomb-building employees are heading to the front instead. And this is just for starters.
No one knows yet about the quality of training. If it will happen. And no one knows yet how will Russia equip 300,000 men on the fly to be ready by November 10. We are not military experts, by any stretch of the imagination, but logic dictates that this Russian campaign is fraught with incompetence. Putin better prepare tens of thousands of body bags to ship to the front in Ukraine as well.
One can imagine that when Russian women have already started protesting across the country to stop the war, how will they behave when their loved ones come back to them frozen and slowly decomposing. This is not going to be a picnic for Putin and his ilk at the Kremlin.
Peter the Great, he is not. Let’s call him Vladimir the Incompetent instead.
THE RUSSIAN MOBILIZATION FROM HELL
As the United States, through the Cold War, drove the Soviet Union to its own self-disintegration, one wonders whether the NATO expansion strategy to crawl closer to Putin’s step door has but one goal, which is to drive the Russian military to its demise. If by design, and from the looks of it, Putin is falling straight into that trap. Right before the eyes of the world.
Maybe within the next few years we are going to witness one of two things. Either the Russian military failures would eventually throw Putin out of power followed by military reforms to halt all future wars (as in the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947), or Putin is able to sustain his occupation of Ukraine, which will end up draining his resources backed by severe western sanctions.
Either way, it does not look pretty for Putin.
Peter the Great, he is not. Let’s call him Vladimir the Incompetent instead.
The Russian Mobilization From Hell
Punditry Staff
