Sanctions against Russia are slowly affecting the economy.
Link Russia's central bank makes huge interest rate hike to try to prop up falling ruble | AP News
The availability of consumer goods is tightening. But, countries like China are selling more cars to Russia. I question if the loss of consumer goods is enough to force any foreign policy changes. The Russian people have endured far worse under communism. Empty shelves didn’t make much difference in Soviet policy.
Drone attacks by Ukrainian forces. The Pskova ones are a new stretch.
The Kremlin says Prigozhen’s plane may have been downed deliberately. That’s certainly one idea, and they will be investigating thoroughly. It may also have been aliens. I know which theory I’d back.
I guess a public concession like that from the Kremlin is maybe a bit surprising.
But no doubt they’re not going to say it was them what did the shooting down, nosirree! It was the USA or the UK or NATO or, I dunno, whoever the current boogeyman is.
But they refused any help from the Brazilian company that makes the plane, saying that an international investigation wasn’t necessary and this was for Russia only to look into. There’s a couple things you might conclude from that.
A cigarette was dropped in spite of the NO SMOKING lamp being lit. People; you have to pay attention to the safety briefing!
Ukrainian drones.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin was from another planet.
This BBC article gives a sense of the atmosphere in Moscow. It seems to be a mix of disagreement with the “special operation” and faith that they’re in the right. I can’t imagine living in a city that might be attacked at any moment. Probably reminiscent in some ways of London during the Blitz (a comparison Putin might like for its anti-Nazi connotations).
lets be realistic and keep things in perspective:
the chances of dying in Moscow due to a UKR drone, is probably on par with dying in a US-city due to a drive-by shooting or a crazy-shooter, so …
I think London in WW2 was a couple of orders of magnitude above that.
Yes. The frustratingly feeble drone strikes on Moscow don’t measurably increase the risk of injury or death of Moscovites. Not so with the Blitz, or other bomber / rocket strikes of the past.
400 mile range ahould get Russia’s attention.
Nor indeed what Russian bombs, drone, and outright murders have done in Ukraine. Perhaps a fairer comparison might be the atmosphere in Berlin as it began to dawn on ordinary Germans that perhaps things weren’t going quite the way they had been told.
Russia may be in the midst of a spiralling crisis of morale amongst its military.
Moscow has been convicting close to 100 soldiers a week for refusing to fight.
“If this trend continues, there will be approximately 5,200 convictions a year for refusing to fight,” according to the [British] MoD. “The high rate of convictions demonstrates the poor state of morale in the Russian Army and the reluctance of some elements to fight. Refusal to fight likely reflects the lack of training, motivation and high stress situations Russian forces face along the entire Ukrainian frontline.
The Kremlin is now mitigating the loss of those unwilling to fight by committing a mass of poorly trained soldiers to the frontline. That only results in further degrading the morale.
Google tells me that there are 300k troops in Ukraine and 1.2 million people total in the Russian military. 5k/year doesn’t seem like much to me.
Don’t know if this is high either to be honest:
True, but I think the importance is more in what this says about morale, not about the number of troops Russia is missing.
If 100 soldiers a week are actually refusing to fight, there are a whole lot more who are serving but are entirely unmotivated.
SAR/Optical imagery confirms two Il-76 transport aircraft were destroyed in the drone attack on Pskov air base, with a further two damaged.
Ground forces + VDV + naval infantry = ~600,000. Or did, no telling what current numbers are now. Have to add in called up reservists, ex-prisoner bullet-soakers and the like and then subtract heavy casualties. Combat power is definitely heavily degraded due to heavy casualties among most or all of the better units (VDV, marines) as well as contract army personnel. Then factor in that a certain portion of any army are made up of guys who kick tires in the motor pool, cook the food, drive the trucks and haul off the recalcitrant to military prison.
Assuming these reports are accurate and not exaggerations (have to make allowances for potential Ukrainian propaganda), bleeding actual combat troops at that rate may or may not have a corrosive effect on combat ability. Probably a lot of them ARE woeful cannon-fodder who weren’t very good soldiers to begin with. But it can cumulatively have a corrosive effect on morale over time.
“Where’s Sergei?”
“He refused to go out last night, said he just couldn’t anymore. They dragged him away screaming about the shells.”
“Well, shit. I liked Sergei.”
“Yeah.”
Russians by all accounts are generally pretty damned fatalistic about their shitty lot in life. But everyone has a breaking point. Just ask Rasputin.