“Russia is proving to be inevitable and is trying to prolong the agony.” Political scientist Pavel Luzin on the mobilization announced by Putin
For the third day in Russia, military commissariats are massively gathering and gathering people for the war with Ukraine as part of the mobilization. the leadership of the Russian Federation went to this escalation? Change the volume of accumulations at the front in the context of the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine? Will the mobilization of turnover in Russia? We are discussing with Pavel Luzin, a political scientist, an expert on public security of the Armed Forces, a visiting fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts University (USA).
RFI: It is officially spread that the Russian population has more than a million inhabitants. And that’s just the army. The police, the National Guard, riot police do not count. Shoigu in the incidence rate, that in Russia the decline since February 24 in Ukraine is less than six thousand dead, and 90% of the wounded have already returned to duty. Since they officially declare that they have a million-strong army, a thousand killed less than 6, almost all the wounded return, the question arises: why was it necessary to announce the mobilization of the public population at all?
Pavel Luzin: Losses now, after the counter-offensive near Kharkov, are under 100 thousand killed and wounded. This is a conservative estimate. Yes, it includes those mobilized in the so-called “DNR” and “LNR”, and the National Guard, and all sorts of mercenaries and so on. But overweight is still military. There are simply more of them, and they have a greater burden. In second place is the National Guard. Mercenaries, Negotiated, “Kadyrovtsy” – it’s all minuscule. They are there more to balance the army, because the Kremlin is afraid of the army, for auxiliary tasks or as completely “cannon fodder”.
As for the wounded, the wounded in battle generally do not return. If a scratch is considered a wound, or when the hatch of the tank is apparently pinched, then, probably, after that a person can return. And if the wounds are shrapnel, they do not return to battle.
Plus – seven months there is a colossal outflow. People are leaving the army, from the National Guard, from the police.
In summary, did the Kremlin take this step, which is obviously dangerous from an internal political point of view, due to a lack of manpower?
Yes, absolutely. A monstrous lack of living power. An army of a million people does not exist in reality. It exists only on paper. In reality, there were about 740-760 thousand people. This is for all types and types of troops. No more than 360 thousand people were detained in the ground forces, airborne forces and marines. No more – that is, this is the ultimate availability. Of these 360 thousand units of constant readiness, there were 168 battalion tactical groups as of the summer of 2021. This is from 134 to 168 thousand people. That’s all. This is what participated in the invasions of Ukraine. The maximum estimate of the number of participants for the second time is up to 190,000 people. This is the army, the National Guard and all the rest. To them, you can conditionally add up to 100 thousand reserve people (this is not a BTG of constant readiness). imagine that with the numbers you have under 100 thousand losses.
Plus, the territory that Russia has occupied in Ukraine only seems small. For such an army, this is a gigantic territory. Some population lives on it – not everyone was able to leave. There are rugged terrain, highly urbanized territory, urban development, rural development, and agglomerations. How to control such a dose? How to keep her?
They became hysterical, announced mobilization, went on an escalation in the hope that they were frightened and they would sit down with them at the negotiating table.
There is an opinion that Putin thus wants to make himself a strong, as he believes, negotiation version. The logic is this: we announce mobilization, carried out by pseudo-referendums, and then we will threaten with nuclear threats if Ukraine allows a counteroffensive. Do you share the opinion that this is how Putin wants to end this war now?
He wants to somehow end the war. But the fact is that it is escalating. This escalation will not work – it will go for this escalation. The next escalation will not work – another escalation will begin. And so on until the full application and coverage of Russia. Russia victory. Now there is already a question of price and time: when Russia agrees that it has shown it. Until Russia agrees. While Russia wants to destroy itself completely.
That is, this is an attempt to delay disclosure in a bloody way?
Yes, this is an attempt to stretch the agony.
Let’s go back to the people who are being mobilized. In your opinion, does Russia have the infrastructure, the opportunity to join these groups of people into a combat-ready creature?
Absolutely not. Already the third day of mobilization. We see that there is no system there, as expected. row everyone you can reach. They frankly take people “on a show off”, get them with humility.
If you served in the army two or three years ago and after that did not go through regular illnesses, then the recovery of diseases is possible, but it takes a month or two. If you served more than two or three years ago, then you need three or four months. If you served more than six or more than seven years ago, you already need to be trained from scratch.
There are unserved people who have tickets, and in these tickets is written a military specialty that the person has never owned. But who cares? They will mobilize everyone they can reach. There are many people who have a military ID and who have not been in the army for a day. To occur in normal soldiers, you need at least four months. This is a course for a young fighter. You need at least six months, but a year is better.
Will they be prepared for months in Russia?
Of course not. The Kremlin does not have time for this. They will not be cooked. Most likely, they will be sent after one or two weeks of idiotic drill. Or even, maybe not drills, but marinating at some gathering points. They will be sent to resupply the broken parts. Some division near Kharkov or near Izyum was defeated, withdrawn in Belgorod, half of the personnel were lost in killed and wounded. They will send mobilized, there will be a division again, and they will return to battle again. There will be no sense from this. Let’s not take into account that not only soldiers are dying, but also sergeants, ensigns, officers. Who will command a lot of people is unclear. there is little left of them – there will be no efficiency.
What should these people wear? What to put on them? What to equip them with? Consumption is a consumable monster. For some positions – for 10 years of operation of factories already, for seven months. These are all palliative measures for dead poultice. This morbidity leads to even greater losses in the Russian army, to even greater suffering for the Ukrainian people. This is a monstrous prolongation of the agony.
Does the Russian military command realize that these people will not be combat-ready? What is expected of them? What is their task?
The command was initially against the war. It was not a fan of the invasion of Ukraine. The fans of the invasion of Ukraine were the Kremlin, people like Turchak, all sorts of generals of the FSB, FSO, all sorts of avengers for the Odessa fire in May 2014. It’s not sick. They were broken on the knee, their opinion was “wiped off”. For seven months, they still thoroughly degraded as an organized military force, as people who have at least some remnants of intelligence, culture and moral phenomena. They don’t think anymore. They just check the check order they were given. But licenses – as they can. This is no longer and will not help save.
If we talk about the reaction in Russia, there have been several new burnings of military registration and enlistment offices in the last two days. Lines of cars at the borders with Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and so on. But at the same time, we see that a lot of people are military registration and enlistment offices on the agenda, although this can not be done, there is administrative responsibility.
Designed for the dumb and the submissive. Those who go to the military registration and enlistment offices do not know about their rights, about anything. All these years they preferred not to read anything, not to notice. Maybe at least in the military registration and enlistment offices their brains will begin, and they will start to get out, sabotage, desert, break the jaw of the military commissar? Something has happened here, because there are people who are going to be slaughtered.
The important point is that for seven months most people in Russia tried not to notice. Close your ears, eyes, don’t look at the loss, don’t know about Bucha, about Irpen, about Mariupol, about Raisins, about other terrible things. And now they are starting to google it and wonder.
However, we do not see the explosion phenomenon.
A social explosion cannot be instantaneous. Everything is unraveling. The 1917 revolution in Russia began with women’s rallies in the lines for bread and the fact that the troops of the Petrograd garrison suddenly realized that they were now being sent to the front, because they were no longer sent to the front. And then the situation started, so to speak. In the event of an occurrence, perhaps we wanted to see something on the horizon in a few weeks, when people are getting low, they begin to massively sabotage everything, in response to coercion – to create resistance, counter-violence.
What is the government doing? It does not just send the mobilized to the war. She initially offers to sign her contracts: “guys, you will have a salary, you will increase mortgages, promise a deferment on a mortgage, you will have money.” The contractor is a volunteer. Legally, this is a volunteer, because Article 421 of the Civil Code is “freedom of contract”. A contract soldier can immediately be sent to combat operations, a conscript – only after four months of training. The Kremlin is trying to protect itself from an explosion among the mobilized. Some will realize where they are when only they are on Ukrainian territory. And it will be much more difficult to “jump off” on the contract. This is an absolutely diabolical story. The Kremlin is trying to bind people with blood.
Will it be possible to mobilize hundreds of thousands?
Hundreds of thousands they were not even born to score. 300,000 is more than all the ground forces before the war, covering a maximum of 168,000 at least somehow combat-ready. It is not clear to use the fact that the period of mobilization is not officially indicated there, then for a certain time they are gaining these 300 thousand. You can try to scrape someone up for 10 years, and nothing is said about 300 thousand in the indicated one. That’s just Shoigu said. According to the documents – nothing is clear at all. Some kind of rubber mobilization without warning.
This mobilization cannot be successful because there is complete chaos and confusion. Mobility is also assumed by the authorities for all occasions of life and the economy. And this is impossible to do. Even if this mobilization were carried out in full measure, it would not change anything. All the war is lost.
Now the so-called. “referenda” in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Entry through “referenda”.
Attempt of mass extermination of criminals. This is madness. Already bombed the Crimea, bombed Belgorod, bombed the Kursk region. They will bomb the occupied territories, which Russia decides in its head, called the territory of the Russian Federation. February 23 is no longer about this speech. we are talking about the international question, do we keep the Russian Federation as a state, as a subject of relations? There is no such certainty. Russia lost its internationally recognized borders in 2014 and is now exacerbating its situation.