The minority factor in Russian army is vastly underrated when discussing the course of Ukrainian war. Firstly, ethnic minorities are not so much a minority there. Judging from the casualty lists, minorities are wildly overrepresented on the battlefields as the cannon fodder🧵
We don't have aggregated data for the entire Russian army. But we can get some idea of who fights in Ukraine from this list of wounded Russian soldiers lying in Rostov hospital. More than half are clearly Dagestani. Magomed (Muhammad) - the most common name in the list of wounded
It makes total sense. As you see almost all Russian regions with high fertility are either ethnic republics or ethnic autonomous okrugs. Caucasians and Siberian natives reproduce, providing a lot of draftable males. Plus they are mostly poor so can be easily lured into the army
That's true both if we look at the country in general, and if we zoom in to the regional level. Consider Astrakhan Oblast - region studied by social anthropologist @TBaktemir It has many ethnic groups ordered into a complex racial hierarchy. It's 67,6% Russian and 14,8% Kazakh
Astrakhan Oblast officially confirmed 7 deaths in Ukraine
Arman Narynbaev
Ali Batyrov
Temirlan Jasagulov
Rysbek Nurpeysov
Anwar Irkaliev
Aynur Nurmakov
Alexander Bezusov
6 Kazakhs, 1 Russian. Being only 14% of population, Kazakhs give 85% casualties. Russians give 14% being 67%
Why? Well the answer is obvious. In Astrakhan Kazakhs stand low in racial hierarchy. It's mostly poor rural population, uneducated and without any real perspectives of social mobility. They're locked on the bottom of social ladder and ofc are looked down upon by other ethnicities
I wanna clarify, I don't say Kazakhs stand low in Russian racial hierarchy in general. They stay low in this specific region. Here they're considered bumpkins with no future and other ethnicities including Turkic and Muslim avoid marrying them. That would be marrying down
Isn't it interesting that in Astrakhan where Kazakhs are underprivileged they, according to official sources, comprise almost all military casualties in Ukraine? Actually it makes sense. Russian army is the army of poor and minorities. That can't be any other way
How do you get to the Russian army? Well, first you need to be drafted. Affluent people are selected out at this stage. People with social capital view military service as the fate of losers. So it's the poor and naive who don't know how (or why) to dodge who are drafted
Then you need to sign a contract. They'll be persuading, shaming, luring, seducing you into signing a contract. A person with social capital who accidentally got drafted will avoid it at all cost, call his lawyers, human rights advocates. So they probably let him go
While signing the contract is usually voluntary (though not always), they heavily concentrate on rural bumpkins. First, it's easier to pressure them, they don't know their rights. Second, it's easier to bribe them with salary prospect, they don't have career anyway
Thirdly, they are disposable. Imagine kids of Moscow intelligentsia getting killed in Ukraine - that's a headache. Their families gonna call lawyers, media, human rights organizations, give interviews. Meanwhile rural bumpkin moms will cry in the pillow and that's it. AMAZING
That's why Russian army is increasingly turning into the army of minorities. Yes, it has always been the army of country folk. But in the past they were mostly ethnic Russian. Nowadays however, there is not so much youth left in ethnic Russian countryside
They're so desperate for manpower that are even pressganging the Central Asian immigrants. Technically these guys could just refuse to sign anything and go. Recruiter would yell, curse, hit his fist on the table and that's it. He can't really do anything. But they don't know it
Recruiting Gastarbeiters is a sign of desperation. It's being done simply because it's easy to persuade them that they must enlist and threaten them with heavy consequences if they don't. There will be no consequences, they have legal rights. They just don't know it
My recommendations to encourage defection and sabotage should be considered in this context. Very soon Russian army will be filled by a number of people who don't share Russian imperial mythos and got there absolutely accidentally. Their motivation will be very, very low
The same was true in WWII. These cases were not published to maintain the illusion about the "unity of Soviet people" but in fact morale of Central Asian troops was very low and they were defecting to Germans en masse, much more than Russians. They didn't see it as their war
That makes sense. Imagine you are a rural Uzbek. Do you view yourself as Russian? Ofc not. Do you believe in Communism? Well, you have to perform all the rituals because authorities demand it but it's not very much interiorised. I like this photo of dekulakization in Uzbekistan
NB: I'm telling about regular minorities and not about Chechens. Chechnya is different. Chechnya is more a vassal kingdom in personal union with Russia and Chechen troops play more an NKVD than regular army role. They are to check and control, not to fight. Strelkov confirms it
Kadyrov had to personally deny that Chechens don't fight:
"I often read as Chechen fighters are accused in inaction, in gowing only in a second or third echelon. Or in just taking recordings with civilians and skipping the real fights"
And posted a "real fight" footage
Doesn't look too persuasive to be honest. By his posture and muscles, the dead is probably dead for several hours. Most probably a fresh and clean Chechen came there much later to take a footage of how Chechens really fight so Kadyrov can post it in Telegram
Funny fact: a Donbass levy field commander Khodakovsky accused Chechens in skipping the real fights. So Kadyrov's henchman Delimkhanov "talked" with him. Ofc Khodakovsky confirmed Chechens absolutely do fight and said "Akhmad Sila" on camera. Kadyrov's troops are more like NKVD
There's a real fighting Chechen force, not on Russian side though. It is a Sheikh Mansur batallion composed from Ichkeria emigres and fighting for Ukraine. Notice the difference with Kadyrov's footages. These are real soldiers, not PR & security troops of Kadyrov
Z-invasion is when (non-Chechen) minorities fight and die for the Russian ethnonationalist project. What do they get in return? Well, assimilation. Notice this poster - it's like "I'm Welsh but today we're all English". For your sacrifice you're allowed to abandon your identity
From the minority perspective Z-invasion looks like a worst trade deal in the history of trade deals ever. They'll bear disproportionate burden of war, taking huge number of casualties. If Z-invasion succeeds, they'll get forced assimilation and will be losing their autonomy
Z-invasion is largely the Russian ethnonationalism run amok. If allowed to succeed in Ukraine it will obviously choose Russian minorities as the next target, that's just too predictable. Why would they need to support it? That's the question many are asking today. End of 🧵
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.
Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.
(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.
With one major exception:
China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB
All basic properties of reality we live in
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power
Soviet output of armaments was absolutely gargantuan, massive, unbeatable. “Extraordinary by any standard” , it was impossible for any other country to compete with.
From 1975 to 1988, the Soviets produced four times as many ICBMs and SLBMs, twice as many nuclear submarines, five times as many bombers, six times as many SAMs, three times as many tanks and six times as many artillery pieces as the United States.
Impossible to compete with.
Which raises a question:
How could the USSR produce so much?
It is not only that the USSR invested every dime into the military production. It is also that the Soviet industry was designed for the very large volumes of output, and worked the best under these very large volumes
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).