On February 24th, 2022 Russia launched their invasion of Ukraine.
The world held its breath and mourned the expected downfall of the much smaller nation
of Ukraine, a nation that had just finally set itself on a path to true democracy and
began to forge closer ties with the liberal world order of the west.
But both Russia and the world severely underestimated the strength of Ukraine and its people, and
the Russian invasion went from expected swift victory to a humiliating defeat for Russian
forces.
The first humiliation for Russia came on the opening days of the war, when its forces attempted
to launch a decapitation strike against Kyiv.
Pushing a large armored force south from Belarus while a helicopter assault secured airfields
outside the Ukrainian capital, things went wrong almost immediately.
Russian forces would famously retreat from Kyiv, signaling that the nation was incapable
of quickly winning this war.
The battle for the future of Ukraine was officially on.
Refocusing to the east of the nation, Russia pushed against Ukrainian defenders with a
massive ground assault.
It had been expected that Ukrainian defenses would fold like a wet paper towel, similar
to their performance in 2014.
However, Russia had not taken into account the radical changes in training, equipment,
and doctrine that took place after the US and its allies spent 8 years training the
Ukrainian military to fight like them.
The transformation was incomplete at the onset of war, but significant enough to cause Russian
massive problems.
The offensive in the east ground to a crawl, with Russia achieving daily gains measured
in dozens of meters.
If Russia made one strategic mistake more catastrophic than any other though it was
fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the conflict, or purposefully ignoring
it for political gain.
Ukraine made no such mistake, and knew that it was in a fight for its life.
On day one of the invasion it launched a massive mobilization and conscription effort, with
men of fighting age being banned from leaving the nation.
The turnout was so massive that Ukraine actually had to turn volunteers away as it simply did
not have the capability to equip and train so many fresh recruits.
The west would soon step in with supplies and even helping ship new recruits to bases
on NATO territory where they could train without fear of Russian attack.
Meanwhile Russia scrambled to replace the combat losses of its initial roughly 200,000
strong invasion force- a force which western analysts all knew would never be enough to
take the entire nation by force.
It soon began to move Battalion Tactical Groups reserved for NATO deterrence into the country
to replace sky-high casualty rates, but even this wouldn't be enough.
At this point any sensible leader would have immediately called for military mobilization,
and yet Putin resisted.
The reasons are various, but the most prominent one seems to be that Putin knows this war
is not very popular, and mobilizing his nation for war might cause political problems large
enough for even Putin to be concerned about.
As an absolute dictator, Putin keeps Russia democratic in name only, and has worked hard
to kill, imprison, or exile any political opposition to his rule.
But that doesn't mean his throne is secure, because Putin has to worry about enemies not
just without, but within.
The Russian Duma and military both house dozens of individuals who would love to take Putin's
place, and may exploit political unrest to unseat him from power.
But mobilization also comes at a significant cost to a nation.
Switching to a wartime economy means retooling your domestic industry to meet the demands
of high intensity warfare, something that the war in Ukraine has revealed that both
Russia and the West have been utterly unprepared for.
Stockpiles of everything from precision missiles to artillery shells and even ammunition for
individual soldiers has been burned through at a frightening rate in the world's first
modern industrialized war.
Details remains sketchy, but most sources state that Ukraine was using as many as 6,000
artillery shells per day, and Russia 20,000.
That means respectively Ukraine is burning through 180,000 artillery shells a month and
Russia a whopping 600,000.
These figures were so alarming for western observers that recently the United States
has begun to rethink its own readiness for a long-term, high intensity conflict against
a near-peer rival such as China.
Making new artillery shells necessitates specialized equipment, requiring a total retool of your
domestic industry.
With manufacturing being largely concentrated in Southeast Asia, the manufacturing base
most modern nations enjoyed in the World War II era is largely nonexistent, making it even
more difficult to retool an economy for high-intensity war.
But artillery shells are still relatively simple to produce- which is probably why Russia
likes them so much- replacing sophisticated weapons like precision missiles or fighter
aircraft is a different matter altogether.
Gone are the days of assembly line workers simply shifting from producing cars to making
fighter planes.
Nowdays manufacturing modern equipment requires highly specialized workers and machinery both.
A recent US report noted that it would simply be impossible to significantly expand US manufacturing
capability of modern weapons in the same time frame as World War II.
So what you enter the war with, is probably all you're going to have unless you have generous
friends.
But even those friends have their own defense concerns.
So while mobilization and a retooling of Russia's economy might see it eventually increase production
of basic items such as artillery shells, military uniforms, and rifle ammunition, there's simply
no way Russia is going to be replacing its stockpile of Iskander ballistic missiles-
which is why its so baffling that it continues to use them against civilian targets while
being militarily defeated.
Yet Putin has not even announced full mobilization and thus a shift to wartime economy.
Instead he continues to play the war in Ukraine as if it's merely a campaign that Russia is
on, as opposed to the high-intensity war that it really is, so the Russian industry remains
largely unchanged and unprepared to replace its terrifyingly large consumption of war
stocks.
Then there's the manpower issue, and well, conscription has never been popular nor produced
the best soldiers, but Russia seems to be really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
At first in order to avoid conscription, Russia called on foreign volunteers, much like Ukraine
did with the formation of its own foreign legions.
Unlike Ukraine however, who enjoyed an influx of significant quantities of experienced,
professional western retired or recently separated soldiers- many of them combat veterans- Russia
got Syrian soldiers that by some accounts, it forced to come to Ukraine and fight.
Many of these volunteers have extremist ties, and very little if any actual formal military
training whatsoever.
While Ukraine's foreign volunteers largely had the experience to be formed into military
units and fit in that role, Russia's foreign volunteers were undisciplined, uncoordinated,
and impossible to coordinate with the actions of the Russian military.
This quickly lead to easy defeats of these units and the relegation of these volunteer
units to cannon fodder or static defense roles.
Then there were the Kadyrovites, units sent by Chechen leader and Putin strongman Ramzan
Kadyrov.
Known for their brutality and crimes against humanity, Russia hoped to deploy these units
as 'shock' troops, and on their way to the war they certainly acted the part.
(play like 15 seconds of clips from this video, use your disgression- don't play this over
the voice over, just have video play on its own:
They quickly earned the nickname of the TikTok Brigade, for their love of posting videos
on social media full of bravado while recounting their alleged victories.
Then the war caught up with them-
Nobody's really heard much from Kadyvorite-associated social media accounts lately, though propaganda
videos of their alleged victories continue to surface from time to time.
Meanwhile Russian forces have been on steady retreat for over a month straight.
At last Putin was forced to accept the truth of the conflict- this would not be over in
a matter of months, Kyiv would not capitulate to his authority, and no amount of TikTok
videos would overcome Ukraine's superior fighting forces.
It was time to admit that Russia needed to mobilize for war, and do so quickly, or else
the entire operation inside Ukraine would quickly fall apart.
The announcement came on the eve of a massively successful Ukrainian counterattack in the
northeast of the country that saw even Russia's mighty 1st Guards Tank army, the unit that
was meant to break the teeth of NATO's best defenses, retreat in such great haste they
abandoned most of their equipment.
Yet Putin did not believe he had the political capital left to announce a full mobilization,
and instead enacted a half-measure, announcing a 'partial mobilization'.
Allegedly, only veterans would be mobilized, with a goal of raising 200,000 conscripts.
Students, certain professionals, and individuals with no previous military experience would
not be mobilized for war.
The reality was immediately different, because this is Russia, and reports quickly came out
of the country of students, young men with no military experience whatsoever, and even
old men with medical conditions being called up.
The response was immediate, with hundreds of thousands of Russians leaving the country
for good, joining an exodus believed to number over a million since the start of the war.
The official goal was 300,000 conscripts, though unofficial leaks claim that Russia
hopes to eventually mobilized as many as a million men- a number it might realistically
need at this point if it hopes to win in Ukraine.
It was soon clear that Russia was taking- or dragging into service- literally anyone
it could.
A 63 year old former staffer who was diabetic and had cerebreal issues was shipped off to
a training camp, eventually returned after public outrage.
Thousands of students received call-up orders, prompting such outrage that Putin was forced
to sign a law confirming that vocational and secondary education students would not be
conscripted.
The Russian military made multiple promises, with the first already being broken.
The next promise was that conscripts would receive several weeks of training at a minimum
and adequate equipment before being sent to fight.
This almost immediately proved to be false.
In one famous case, a military doctor is recorded briefing fresh conscripts.
She instructs them to use their own money to buy sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and other
supplies, because the military will not provide such things.
She also implores them to ask their mothers, wives and girlfriends to send them tampons
to use for bullet wounds, because the military would also not be supplying them with first
aid kits.
The chaos of mobilization has been well documented.
You're probably at least somewhat familiar with what US recruits face at basic training.
However, Russia is handling its influx of new recruits...differently.
Almost immediately reports of poor treatment and lack of supplies flooded social media
via Telegram.
Things such as socks are in such short supply that conscripts are being instructed on the
use of foot wraps, an old technique from the early 20th century that predated mass adoption
of socks by many people in poorer parts of Europe.
Among widespread reports of a lack of food and water, with some conscripts not eating
for days after being rounded up, are reports that new conscripts are forced to sleep on
the ground.
But these conscripts are lucky, because others apparently have no facilities to be held at,
resulting in them being dumped in fields with no supplies or equipment.
These men are being forced to fend for themselves, with many reports of them stealing pipes and
copper wiring to try to sell to locals for cash to buy food, blankets, and other basic
necessities.
There are widespread reports of conscripts being issued weapons that are thoroughly rusted,
though many obeservers have rightly pointed out that these weapons are merely being used
for familiarity training.
To date, while some of the weapons used in combat by Russia have certainly seen better
days, there's no reports of completely rusted hunks of junks of the type seen in some conscript
videos actually making it to the front.
The training these conscripts are receiving seems to be severely abbreviated though- at
least for some.
While some units appear to be receiving the promised weeks of military training- which
is still entirely too short for any serious military training- there are many, many reports
of other units being sent almost directly to the front line in Ukraine.
Some conscripts have filmed themselves complaining of having fired their weapon once before being
sent to the front.
The reason is obvious to any observer, and a clue to why mobilization simply won't save
this war for Russia.
Russia's lines are destabilizing and parts of the front are under serious threat of complete
collapse.
Russia needs bodies in the fight now, it can't afford to wait the standard six months it
would take to take a brand new conscript and give them serious military training.
So some of these conscripts are being sent directly to the front to try to slow down
the Ukrainians long enough for better trained units to be mobilized.
It's a cold calculus, but not uncommon- using soldiers like cannon fodder is a time-honored
tradition in the Russian military that stretches back to the turn of the 20th century.
However, when conscripts actually get to the front, morale and discipline is glaringly
low.
. Russian soldiers in general have a reputation for heavy drinking, even on duty- famously
an entire artillery unit did not execute a single fire mission during Ukraine's re-taking
of Lyiv because they were all drunk.
However, having fresh conscripts show up to the front staggering drunk is a bad sign that
you're not fielding quality troops.
That appears to be in line with Russia's issuing of poor quality equipment- when it can afford
to do so.
Its helmets have been famously lampooned by Ukrainian forces, who are equipped with western
helmets themselves and were shocked to find how cheap Russian helmets were.
Their body armor doesn't appear to be much better, with many conscripts being forced
to turn to family to buy them real body armor.
Family members who buy equipment for their mobilized children or husbands are warned
to bring them the equipment themselves, as theft is rampant in the Russian armed forces.
Stalin famously said that quantity is a quality all its own, and for most of the Cold War
he was absolutely correct.
However, Stalin never had to face modern NATO weapons wielded by American-trained Ukrainians
thoroughly pissed off about the invasion of their homeland.
But while the quality of Russian recruits, their training, and equipment is a sign that
mobilization is not going to win the war for Putin, his defeat is almost certain due to
one single thing: timing.
When the war began Ukraine immediately began its mobilization effort, gradually absorbing
hundreds of thousands of new recruits and sending them away for months of training.
Six months after the start of the war the first waves of these new recruits joined the
fighting.
Now while Putin is rushing to send poorly trained conscripts, or completely untrained
cannon fodder, to the front lines, Ukraine is steadily forming new units of conscripts
who have undergone half a year of military training.
Russia's failure to immediately mobilize for war when it was obvious Kyiv would not fall
in April will almost certainly cost it the victory it craves.
Now go check out how war in ukraine will cause Russian to collapse, or click this other video
instead!