There are ways to sabotage Russian war capacities by focusing on its three major bottlenecks: demographic, economic & institutional. Let's start with demography. Russian started this war suffering from the shortage of young draftable males🧵
That's a very underrated fact. Many argue that the demographic pressure of growing population (Africa, Middle East) increases a risk of war/revolution. But Russia doesn't have this pressure. Compare it's demographic pyramid with Syria: Russia's quickly depopulating. It grew old
In fact, Russian-Ukrainian war is may be the first major war between two quickly depopulating nations. For this reason it can't be directly compared to Iran-Iraq or other conventional wars between relatively big but young powers. Russia, Ukraine are both old. Few youngsters there
Russian performance in this war will be different from the past. Yes, before WWII Russia would fight real wars all the time. But back then Russia was younger. Its demographic pyramid of 1927 looks more like Syria than like modern Russia
Today an average age in Russia 40 years. In 1914 in the age of huge families and no family planning it was 16 years old. Russia was a country of adolescents much like Black Africa is today. This demographic pressure might explain excesses of revolution and civil war of 1917-1921
Before the revolution birth control was virtually unknown, almost all of Russian population rural, people were subsistence farmers and their families tend to be very big. Thus Russia had a constant excess of youth which its emperors could utilise for their imperial delusions
XX century put end to this. Death toll of collectivisation, purges, and the WWII was devastating. Consider this photo of public street dances in late 1940s. Girls are dancing together, cuz boys are dead. From the high school class of 1941 only 3% were alive by the end of the war
Even more important factors were industrialisation and urbanisation. In 1900 majority were substinence farmers living in their own houses. By 1960s they were waged workers living in small urban dorms. Both mom and dad had to work, birth control was available. Fertility dropped
That's what believers in based invincible Russia which always wins miss completely. Back then Russia was a country with Syria-style population pyramid and produced enough young males to sacrifice in endless conflicts. Young men were not a bottleneck. Now they are
That partially explains why Putin attacked Ukraine with such a small army and didn't immediately start mobilisation. There are not so many males to mobilise in the first place. Meanwhile Ukrainian-published videos of captured conscripts will damage the Putin's spring draft a lot
Now who fights in Putin's army? Well, that's pretty easy to answer. Most of file and rank of the Russian army are either current or former conscripts. They are young guys from small towns and usually underprivileged background. Richer, more privileged ones would dodge the draft
In a good Moscow school where I studied almost everyone dodged the draft. Those who were drafted were considered very unlucky or not that smart. Nobody would ever view those going to the army with respect. Draft was a misfortune, a bad accident, you should avoid
Those who get into the army are usually from poor families & small towns. Because richer/smarter/educated ones dodge it. Then these conscripts who don't know their rights will be persuaded, pressured or just forced to sign a contract and become контрактники professional soldier
So in the social dimension, Russian army is the army of poor guys from small towns. Their recruitment was conducted either by sheer force (призывники) or by a certain combination of force and persuasion (контрактники). Sometimes they just force conscripts to sign the contract
In the ethnic dimension it's even more interesting than that. With ethnic Russians quickly depopulating, minorities provide disproportionally high share of young draftable males. And I'm not talking about Kadyrov's troops
Chechnya is a vassal kingdom of Kadyrov in personal union with Russia. It's not an integral part of Russia and its troops are not part of Russian army.Chechen conscript don't go to Russian army, they go to its "Chechen regiments" which are led by and personally loyal to Kadyrov
Once again - Kadyrov's troops can have whatever BS bureaucratic labels - "army", "police", "FSB", etc. But being classified as parts of these branches of Russian regulars they're obedient only to their warlord. I described it here in more detailed way
I'm talking about normal Russian regulars. While Chechen conscripts go to "Russian regiments quartered in Chechnya" = private army of Kadyrov, Dagestani, Ingush, Kabarda and other minority conscripts go to regular Russian army and comprise every growing part of it
Consider this random list of wounded Russian soldiers in a hospital in Rostov Oblast (=wounded in Ukraine). Dagestani names comprise about a half of the list. Russian army is quickly becoming the army of minorities
Furthermore, I'm now getting a lot of messages from Central Asians whom authorities try to persuade/force into the army. It's not some sort of ideological decision. In a quickly depopulating country you have no choice but to impress immigrants there to keep the war going
Let's sum up. In the past, Russia launched huge continental wars and finished them at whatever cost. But it could pay this cost because in a country of huge peasant families and constant excess of youth they could easily sacrifice that youth for the sake of imperial grandeur
Now Russia is a low fertility depopulating country which accidentally started a major war. It didn't plan a war, it planned a nice and easy occupation. Much of early Russian losses are explained by Russian columns simply entering into the cities and being immediately destroyed
Unlike any major war Russia launched before, now it will have to proceed with a shortage of youth. Young males are a major bottleneck now. That's why Russian regular army is much less Russian than in any previous epoch since 16th c. It's an army of minorities & provincial poor
Hence policy recommendation. Open the green corridor. Many Russian soldiers would actively look for the ways out but they don't want to sit in Ukrainian prison СИЗО which happens if they just surrender. So, open the corridor abroad to any poor warm country
Tourist industry of Turkey, Egypt, etc is now suffering for the lack of Russian tourists. Thus:
1. Rent cheap hostels, cheap hotels, whatever 2. Ship their those who surrendered till the end of the war. Give them bed + food 3. Take photos with them there, distribute in Telegram
That would have huge impact on the troops morale which you probably underestimate it. Human behaviour is much more situation specific than we'd like to admit. Russian soldiers stood to death at Borodino but they deserted away en masse in France. Cuz they had the way out
We very much overestimate human (and our own) "integrity" and "consistency". In fact our behaviour is very situation specific and depends on circumstances. We do what we like (and can do) and then make up justifications why this was right, limited only by our verbal intelligence
NB it shouldn't be a "good" way out. It shouldn't be a way out with clear understanding what to do next and other irrelevant BS. Situation this guys are facing looks like this. The way out shouldn't be perfect, it just has to exist and they should know it does
Furthermore, apart from bad & food for surrender give them cash for destroying the equipment and documenting it. Like you put the wrong oil to the truck engine and destroyed it? 2 thousand bucks. 2% of active hustlers are enough to inflict enormous damage on the fighting capacity
We also underestimate how many of our social mechanisms work only because of mutual trust. Only because almost nobody of those engaged will seek to disrupt them for its own sake. 2% of saboteurs is very, very much and inflicts enormous damage. Equipment destroyed, trust destroyed
Ofc you can invest money into destroying Russian army. That works. But paying Russian soldiers to destroy Russian army is way more cost-effective. They know how to do it, also they're poor and value money more. Besides, many of them have very low motivation
Additional benefit would be: if desertion from the Russian army increases, Russian commandment will be much more reluctant to send any low morale (=almost any) troops to Ukraine. If you know significant number defect to the enemy, you vet them harder and recruit less soldiers
Many imagine Russian army being proud, exhilarated and very well respected. Not quite. Russian army has no respect at all. Just look how this TV host yells on a veteran who suggests making a minute of silence for "our boys in Ukraine"
You can read a more detailed account of Russian army with mafia racketeering Syrian veterans and nuclear rockets bases, with conscripts being forced into gay prostitution here
Russian fighting capacity will hugely deteriorate if you give a way out to the closest warm countries with bed, food, and cash payments for proven sabotage. Done ASAP that would be very detrimental for Russian fighting capacity, manpower being its major bottleneck. End of 🧵
One thing you need to understand about wars is that very few engage into the long, protracted warfare on purpose. Almost every war of attrition was planned and designed as a short victorious blitzkrieg
And then everything went wrong
Consider the Russian war in Ukraine. It was not planned as a war. It was not thought of as a war. It was planned as a (swift!) regime change allowing to score a few points in the Russian domestic politics. And then everything went wrong
It would not be an exaggeration to say that planning a short victorious war optimised for the purposes of domestic politics is how you *usually* end up in a deadlock. That is the most common scenario of how it happens, practically speaking
Global politics are usually framed in terms of kindergarten discourse (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) with an implication that you must provide “good guys” with boundless and unconditional support
BUT
Unconditional support is extremely corrupting, and turns the best of the best into the really nasty guys, and relatively fast
Part of the reason is that neither “bad” nor “good” guys are in fact homogenous, and present a spectrum of opinions and personalities. Which means that all of your designated “good guys” include a fair share of really, really nasty guys, almost by definition.
Purely good movements do not really exist
That is a major reason why limitless, unconditional, unquestioning support causes such a profound corrupting effect upon the very best movement. First, because that movement is not all
that purely good as you imagine (neither movement is),
Let's have a look at these four guys. Everything about them seems to be different. Religion. Ideology. Political regime. And yet, there is a common denominator uniting all:
Xi - 71 years old
Putin - 72 years old
Trump - 79 years old
Khamenei - 86 years old
Irrespectively of their political, ideological, religious and whatever differences, Russia, China, the United States, Iran are all governed by the old. Whatever regime, whatever government they have, it is the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have the final saying in it.
This fact is more consequential than it seems. To explain why, let me introduce the following idea:
Every society is a multiracial society, for every generation is a new race
Although we tend to imagine them as cohesive, all these countries are multigenerational -> multiracial
In 1927, when Trotsky was being expelled from the Boslhevik Party, the atmosphere was very and very heated. One cavalry commander met Stalin at the stairs and threatened to cut off his ears. He even pretended he is unsheathing he sabre to proceed
Stalin shut up and said nothing
Like obviously, everyone around could see Stalin is super angry. But he still said nothing and did nothing
Which brings us to an important point:
Nobody becomes powerful accidentally
If Joseph Stalin seized the absolute control over the Communist Party, and the Soviet Union, the most plausible explanation is that Joseph Stalin is exercising some extremely rare virtues, that almost nobody on the planet Earth is capable of
Highly virtuous man, almost to the impossible level
Growing up in Russia in the 1990s, I used to put America on a pedestal. It was not so much a conscious decision, as the admission of an objective fact of reality. It was the country of future, the country thinking about the future, and marching into the future.
And nothing reflected this better than the seething hatred it got from Russia, a country stuck in the past, whose imagination was fully preoccupied with the injuries of yesterday, and the phantasies of terrible revenge, usually in the form of nuclear strike.
Which, of course, projected weakness rather than strength
We will make a huuuuuuge bomb, and drop it onto your heads, and turn you into the radioactive dust, and you will die in agony, and we will be laughing and clapping our hands
Fake jobs are completely normal & totally natural. The reason is: nobody understands what is happening and most certainly does not understand why. Like people, including the upper management have some idea of what is happening in an organisation, and this idea is usually wrong.
As they do not know and cannot know causal relations between the input and output, they just try to increase some sort of input, in a hope for a better output, but they do not really know which input to increase.
Insiders with deep & specific knowledge, on the other hand, may have a more clear & definite idea of what is happening, and even certain, non zero degree of understanding of causal links between the input and output