1. Well, Russia already did mass mobilisation in Donbass. It is the Ukrainian citizens that are the main Russian cannon fodder. I have no idea why this is not discussed more often
2. Mass mobilisation in Russia would be a stupid decision
That's the context for the @amnesty argument about civilians being put on the harm's way by the Ukrainian defence. Once a Donbass city fells to Russia, males 18-60 will be press-ganged to the army and then recycled in the frontal attacks on the Ukrainian positions. That's reality
Scenario under which civilians won't suffer just does not exist. From the Russian perspective population of the conquered territory is just the cheap cannon fodder which they send to frontal attacks with WWII weapon. Entire male population of Donbass is being recycled by Russia
Recruiters would literally hunt for males on Donetsk and Luhansk streets. Many were living on their work to avoid coming out to the street for months. Anyone who stepped outside would be caught, press-ganged and sent to die
The news from April. A famous Donetsk pianist was KIA when fighting for Mariupol (on Russian side). How did he get into the army though?
Social media give some context:
"Philharmonie was cheated! they were told to come to record a video... but instead they were all taken in the unknown direction!!"
"We were told the same, they cheated us too. Opera, circus. Donbass"
"He was not a volunteer! Like all musicians!"
You can watch an early video of this war with the Donbass civilians forcibly mobilised for the Russian colonial troops. They are called "1st and 2nd Donbass Army Corps" but are fully controlled by Russia. Cannon fodder are Ukrainian, but 100% of generals and seniors are Russian
Here you see the forcibly mobilised Donbass civilians who were forced to fight for Mariupol and now declare they don't want to fight any further. A few declarations like this came out this summer
Another declaration of forcibly mobilised Donbass civilians who do not want to fight anymore. That's literally the press-ganged cannon fodder, the colonial troops
Strelkov on how Russia recruited its cannon fodder in Donbass. It launched a total mobilisation in Donetsk and Luhansk. Students, professors, STEM and humanities. [What he doesn’t mention is workers, but that's very common, too] Everyone can be pressganged including those over 50
Forced total mobilisation of the Donbass males who are then sent to fight for Russia as the most expendable cannon fodder Putin has is *the* major war crime of this Russia's invasion. Russia is forcing Ukrainian civilians to fight for it
Total mobilisation of the Donbass people into the Russian colonial troops is *the* major war crimes of the last months. The fact that it is not in the centre of the public discussion makes me to question integrity of the entire media & NGO bureaucracy that chooses to ignore it
Every time the Ukrainian army retreats, civilians are being put on the harm's way. Russian proxies from the DPR and LPR will hunt for the males on streets, catch everyone they can find, pressgang them and recycle in the frontal attacks. They're 100% disposable
Almost complete silence of media and NGO on the total mobilisation in Donbass is shoking. It must be in the centre of discussion, not some fringe issue few heard about. Obscurity of this crime makes me question both competence & integrity of those who choose to ignore it. The end
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The great delusion about popular revolts is that they are provoked by bad conditions of life, and burst out when they exacerbate. Nothing can be further from truth. For the most part, popular revolts do not happen when things get worse. They occur when things turn for the better
This may sound paradoxical and yet, may be easy to explain. When the things had been really, really, really bad, the masses were too weak, to scared and too depressed to even think of raising their head. If they beared any grudges and grievances, they beared them in silence.
When things turn for the better, that is when the people see a chance to restore their pride and agency, and to take revenge for all the past grudges, and all the past fear. As a result, a turn for the better not so much pacifies the population as emboldens and radicalises it.
The first thing to understand about the Russian-Ukrainian war is that Russia did not plan a war. And it, most certainly, did not plan the protracted hostilities of the kind we are seeing today
This entire war is the regime change gone wrong.
Russia did not want a protracted war (no one does). It wanted to replace the government in Kyiv, put Ukraine under control and closely integrate it with Russia
(Operation Danube style)
One thing to understand is that Russia viewed Ukraine as a considerable asset. From the Russian perspective, it was a large and populous country populated by what was (again, from the Russian perspective) effectively the same people. Assimilatable, integratable, recruitable
In 1991, Moscow faced two disobedient ethnic republics: Chechnya and Tatarstan. Both were the Muslim majority autonomies that refused to sign the Federation Treaty (1992), insisting on full sovereignty. In both cases, Moscow was determined to quell them.
Still, the final outcome could not be more different. Chechnya was invaded, its towns razed to the ground, its leader assassinated. Tatarstan, on the other hand, managed to sign a favourable agreement with Moscow that lasted until Putin’s era.
The question is - why.
Retrospectively, this course of events (obliterate Chechnya, negotiate with Tatarstan) may seem predetermined. But it was not considered as such back then. For many, including many of Yeltsin’s own partisans it came as a surprise, or perhaps even as a betrayal.
The single most important thing to understand regarding the background of Napoleon Bonaparte, is that he was born in the Mediterranean. And the Mediterranean, in the words of Braudel, is a sea ringed round by mountains
We like to slice the space horizontally, in our imagination. But what we also need to do is to slice it vertically. Until very recently, projection of power (of culture, of institutions) up had been incomparably more difficult than in literally any horizontal direction.
Mountains were harsh, impenetrable. They formed a sort of “internal Siberia” in this mild region. Just a few miles away, in the coastal lowland, you had olives and vineyards. Up in the highland, you could have blizzards, and many feet of snow blocking connections with the world.
Slavonic = "Russian" religious space used to be really weird until the 16-17th cc. I mean, weird from the Western, Latin standpoint. It was not until second half of the 16th c., when the Jesuit-educated Orthodox monks from Poland-Lithuania started to rationalise & systematise it based on the Latin (Jesuit, mostly) model
One could frame the modern, rationalised Orthodoxy as a response to the Counterreformation. Because it was. The Latin world advanced, Slavonic world retreated. So, in a fuzzy borderland zone roughly encompassing what is now Ukraine-Belarus-Lithuania, the Catholic-educated Orthodox monks re-worked Orthodox institutions modeling them after the Catholic ones
By the mid-17th c. this new, Latin modeled Orthodox culture had already trickled to Muscovy. And, after the annexation of the Left Bank Ukraine in 1654, it all turned into a flood. Eventually, the Muscovite state accepted the new, Latinised Orthodoxy as the established creed, and extirpated the previous faith & the previous culture
1. This book (“What is to be done?”) has been wildly, influential in late 19-20th century Russia. It was a Gospel of the Russian revolutionary left. 2. Chinese Communists succeeded the tradition of the Russian revolutionary left, or at the very least were strongly affected by it.
3. As a red prince, Xi Jinping has apparently been well instructed in the underlying tradition of the revolutionary left and, very plausibly, studied its seminal works. 4. In this context, him having read and studied the revolutionary left gospel makes perfect sense
5. Now the thing is. The central, seminal work of the Russian revolutionary left, the book highly valued by Chairman Xi *does* count as unreadable in modern Russia, having lost its appeal and popularity long, long, long ago. 6. In modern Russia, it is seen as old fashioned and irrelevant. Something out of museum