The figure is higher than the same draft last year when Putin recruited 130,000, and in spring when he drafted another 150,000.

Vladimir Putin has ordered the conscription of another 133,000 soldiers to aid his war in Ukraine.

The 18-to-30 year olds will be called up between tomorrow and December 31, but parents have raised fear that the untrained conscripts will be thrust straight into ‘hot’ border regions close to the war zone.

The figure is higher than the same draft last year when Putin recruited 130,000, and in spring when he drafted another 150,000.

The Russian regime is facing an increasing backlash over use of conscripts close to the war zone in defiance of an earlier Putin promise to parents that he would not put recruits in harm’s way.

    • tootoughtoremember@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      2 个月前

      The British gave time, the Americans gave money, the Soviets gave blood.

      The Russian capacity to throw seemly endless bodies toward a goal is virtually part of their mythos. The above quote is from Stalin in regards to defeating the Nazis. The situation couldn’t be more different, other than in the propaganda coming from Putin.

      • weeeeum@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 个月前

        That’s when people bred like rabbits, Russian fertitility has been dropping for decades and their 21-30 cohort is one of the smallest anongst the population.

    • makyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      2 个月前

      I can’t remember what podcast I was listening to, maybe a Dan Carlin series, but it was talking about how in this post industrialization + propaganda era the breaking point for nations is far FAR more extreme than it was in the before times.

    • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 个月前

      I find myself wondering if this is even perceived as a negative at all by the public. Certain people no doubt look at service as a job opportunity and some actually support the goals of the war and believe Putin’s hype about fighting Nazis.

      Has the war effort even gotten through those types yet? Is it really taking fathers away from their families? Are those fathers not bought in on the war?

      This is what I worry about. That Russia is not even straining yet, let alone close to breaking.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        2 个月前

        The last Russian revolution in 1917 was driven by military losses and lack of food. Putin has been avoiding Russian losses by using Indians, Cubans, and prisoners instead of the Russian population. Not sure how they’re doing on food.

          • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
            5·
            2 个月前

            To be fair I also forgot the Russian mercenaries. Remember Wagner Group? Apparently they’re being absorbed into the Russian National Guard now.

      • BMTea@lemmy.worldEnglish
        114·
        2 个月前

        I don’t get why you guys view it this way. They, as Russians, are being utilized by the state and expended in a war of conquest that was initiated by an autocratic leader. The nation has paid a steep economic cost for it. That’s hard fact.

        But it’s also hard fact that their Russian nation is gaining territory. It is true that their country doesn’t control its strategic environment, their historic rivals in America and Western Europe. It is true that the last time they let these rivals lead them somewhere, it was to national decline and humilation.

        So yes, it is a tragedy, but the same one that characterizes the history of nations, and there is a rational element to the ideology that so many Russians now follow. The danger is the irrational element which turns this nationalist war into a racial or religious crusade, which are present but in my view not dominant.