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by esseph
318 days ago
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I don't understand why this is Amazing, Russia has 4x the population of Ukraine and they've been conscripted since the beginning. What is amazing is that we've been at this point for years and Russia has only made teeny tiny amounts of progress. Winter Bear? Paper tiger. They never would have stood a chance directly against the US in a peer conflict. |
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Russia, and many other countries - like everywhere in Scandinavia, has compulsory military enlistment or conscription. But these people generally are not eligible to be sent abroad to participate in conflicts. Instead it's used for training. After that training they are then required to sign up for the equivalent of the US Selective Service where, after after some years (2 in Russia), they may be called up, or mobilized, for participation in any conflict. Russia carried out one very small scale mobilization very early on in the war. It led to hundreds of thousands of Russians leaving the country and was generally exceptionally unpopular. Since then their entire army has been 100% volunteer forces.
By contrast Ukraine immediately, after the war began, made it illegal for men of "fighting age" (18-60) to leave the country and declared a general mobilization such that any man of "fighting age" can be immediately mobilized and sent to the front. This had led to them at times literally dragging people off the streets, beating them into submission when necessary (with more than a few 'deaths in training'), giving then some performative training, and then sending them to the front. And the like the GP mentioned, they recently passed a law to allow even 60+ year olds to enlist, limiting potential medical exemptions, and more. In other words - they are simply running out of people.
So Russia has been essentially fighting a war of attrition against an endless hoard of people armed with hundreds of billions of dollars in the Western gear, directed by Western instructors, using Western intelligence, and winning. It's going to be difficult for any developed nation, including the US, to ever fight a real war like this - because people aren't going to tolerate general mobilization, let alone people coming back in body bags by the hundreds of thousands, for the sake of geopolitics half way around the world. Even Russia has managed to do so only by offering extremely high wages for their soldiers, but it's unclear what this will entail once the war winds down. Hopefully they have not found themselves in the US trap where they suddenly essentially have to always be at war to keep their economy chugging along.