1/ Russia faces an increasingly severe shortage of workers due to the war in Ukraine, with a shortfall of as many as 1.7 million people. Public transport has been especially badly hit due to drivers taking better-paid military jobs. Women are being recruited to fill the gaps. ⬇️
2/ A recent investigation by Novaya Gazeta Evropa found that that Russia has lost up to 1.7 million workers, or about 2.2% of the country's workforce, since the invasion of February 2022. A report by the Okno Group highlights the impact that this has had on public transport.
3/ In the city of Novokuznetsk in southwestern Siberia, the Piteravto bus company is only able to run 153 of its 210 buses due to a shortage of drivers. The city's other transport companies are also suffering shortfalls, causing cancellations and long delays on bus lines.
4/ At least 30 of Russia's regions have reported similar shortages of transport workers. The Siberian city of Omsk has a shortage of 850 drivers. Krasnoyarsk has a shortfall of 20-25%, while Krasnoyarsk has lost 50% of its bus drivers. Novosibirsk lacks over 450 drivers.
5/ The cause is the same: as a resident of Abakan in southern Siberia says, "everyone who knew how to drive left for the Special Military Operation under contract for the front-line millions [of rubles]". Military wages and conditions are seen as far better than those at home.
6/ A Novosibirsk city deputy says: "Salaries in this sector are not bad: about 75,000 ($875) in the commercial sector, 100,000 ($1,170) in the municipal sector. But many men prefer to go to the Special Military Operation to get 200,000-plus ($2,335).
7/ "In addition, the disgusting working conditions in public transport, specifically on municipal routes, have an impact: at the final stops it is good if there is a bio-toilet, but not everywhere. Somewhere there are wooden toilets.
8/ "Toilets are not cleaned very often, they look downright bad. Drivers have nowhere to rest: when there is a shift change, a driver can stand for an hour or two. There used to be rest rooms, but now there are none. They don't even have a place to eat.
9/ "And this applies to 95 per cent of stops."
While many drivers have gone to the front lines, many more have gone to work in support of the wider war effort. The independent transport analyst Vladislav Bulgakov notes that around a million people are involved with the war.
10/ "It is not only about the military. There are those who work on construction sites in Mariupol, various suppliers to the Defence Ministry and so on. Accordingly, there is a great demand for lorry drivers, primarily. Transport companies began to think, do and raise wages.
11/ "As a result, those drivers who had not even thought about it before went to work on lorries. There is another problem here: transport companies, unlike public transport, operate in purely market conditions.
12/ "They have the opportunity, for example, to raise the fare, remove some costs and, as a result, raise wages. Public transport in cities has none of this: even if we are talking about subsidised routes, the regulated tariff includes minimum wages, minimum profitability."
13/ Bulgakov comments that this is a problem "not only in public transport, but in all blue-collar jobs. People go to the army, to defence industrial enterprises that offer huge salaries, to big business, which is more flexible and can offer more."
14/ Anti-migrant sweeps, particularly after the Crocus City Hall attack in March 2024, have deterred many Central Asians from taking jobs in Russia. Those who do find themselves being exploited to work excessively long hours to make up the shortfall.
15/ This can have tragic consequences. In May 2024, a bus crashed into the Moika River in St Petersburg, killing several passengers, after the exhausted driver – a migrant – had been forced to do a 20-hour shift.
16/ Back in Novokuznetsk, the city authorities are trying to attract women to fill the vacant roles. Bus driver pay is to be raised to 100,000 rubles, with benefits for their children including kindergartens and after-school programmes, hot school lunches and children's camps.
17/ The locals don't seem to be keen. One woman, Svetlana Ivanova, thinks the idea is crazy. "Well, women will come there, and eventually they'll find out that men sit behind the wheel for 18-20 hours a day. And who would go there under such conditions, even for 100,000?" /end
1/ The Russian 'Fighterbomber' Telegram channel posts an interesting recollection on a (fortunately now defunct) item of Soviet military technology - the Airfield Braking Unit or ATU, which did not exactly work as the designers had planned. ⬇️
2/ Fighterbomber writes: "One of the most difficult elements of flight science and flight in general is landing an aircraft.
3/ "Sometimes due to the pilot's mistakes in landing or some failures of aircraft braking devices of any length, the runway is not enough to stop the aircraft within its limits and the aircraft rolls away to the dump. Together with the crew, or without it.
1/ An entire military hospital is reported to have effectively been stolen by corrupt contractors. The S. M. Kirov Military Medical Academy is said to have been swindled out of 1.4 billion rubles ($16.5 m) intended to build a new clinic for wounded Russian soldiers. ⬇️
2/ In 2021, the Russian Ministry of Defence contracted with the public-law company VSK to build a new multidisciplinary clinic of the Kirov Military Medical Academy in Saint Petersburg, intended to be used to treat over 800 military personnel.
3/ VSK subcontracted another company, KapEnergoStroy SPb, and transferred to it about 1.4 billion rubles as an advance payment. This was equivalent to 80% of the entire value of the contract. However, the money was transferred to shell companies, cashed out and disappeared.
1/ A Russian soldier has been sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony for stealing a weapon, getting drunk, and carrying out a mass shooting in Miass. The case is part of a record crime wave in Russia, partially fuelled by the war in Ukraine. ⬇️
2/ The unnamed junior sergeant stole an fellow soldier's assault rifle and ammunition earlier in 2023. At 1 AM on 10 September 2023, he decided to steal a truck, hit the driver in the face, took away the keys and drove away in it. However, he was soon stopped by traffic police.
3/ The police did not arrest him. That evening, he went drinking with friends and learned of a conflict between one of them and two brothers. He got into a friend's car around 9 PM, armed with the assault rifle, and spotted the brothers in a crowd on Miass's Sverdlova Street.
1/ A new type of Russian kamikaze drone, known as the Gerbera, was used in this week's large-scale drone attack on Ukraine. Derived from Iran's Shahed drone, technical details of the Gerbera have been published on Telegram. ⬇️
2/ The Russian Weapons Telegram channel reports that the Gerbera can be used in multiple configurations, including reconnaissance, as decoys, or as a one way attack drone:
3/ "In the reconnaissance configuration, this drone can be equipped with a multispectral television and thermal imaging optical-electronic module with a short-/medium-wave IR channel, as well as a command and telemetry channel and a channel for transmitting video images from…
1/ More details have emerged of the life of the late Nikita Fedyanin, the administrator of the Grey Zone Telegram channel and Wagner Group fighter. An interview with his mother provides insights into his career and last assignment. ⬇️
2/ According to Fedyanin's mother Nina Ivanovna, he was born and lived in Lipetsk, about 370 km (220 mi) south-east of Moscow. Fedyanin attended the local university and graduated with honors. He received a second degree in law from a Moscow university.
3/ Fedyanin subsequently studied at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (pictured below), but just before defending his diploma he dropped out. He signed a new contract with Wagner and went to Africa in January 2024 to fight in Mali.
1/ Observations from a Russian milblogger on the deficiencies in Russia's "grinding strategy" in Ukraine, based on his experiences of playing Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness as an orc (!). He recommends that Russia's "real Horde" should learn the same lessons: ⬇️
2/ "By the way, personally, when I was 7 years old, I compared the grinding strategy with a properly prepared combat operation. And all this thanks to the Warcraft 2 strategy game.
3/ "The experiment was as follows. I played for the Horde against the Alliance, the computer and I started the mission in the same economic conditions: 3-4 farmhands, the main building, a couple of residential buildings.