Russia needs conscription because it’s winning the war? Likely story

“One way ticket from Moscow to Dubai Sir?  That’ll be 300,0000 roubles. Or to put it another way – five months’ salary.”

That was the price just hours ahead of President Putin’s announcement of a partial military mobilisation. Tickets were selling fast, but not as quickly as to cheaper “no visa” destinations such as Turkey and Armenia – they sold out. Pressure on Russia’s most popular flight-booking site, Aviasales, eased when details were announced but there are still hundreds of thousands of men in Russia worried that they may be spending Christmas on the front lines in Ukraine.

Putin said conscription would begin immediately and affect “only citizens who are currently in the reserve”. Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, then gave more details about Russia’s first mobilisation since the Second World War. About 300,000 troops will be drawn from the 2 million strong reservists. They will undergo retraining before being put together in units and sent into Ukraine. He also updated Russia’s version of casualty figures which included a remarkable and palpably ridiculous claim about the number of Ukrainian military fatalities.

Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine since February 24. This contrasts with American estimates which are between 15,000 and 20,000. He then claimed that 90% of wounded Russian soldiers were now back with their units which if true suggests most of them had but a mere scratch. There was an equally bizarre account of Ukrainian military losses. Shoigu asks us to believe that in, what he said was an army of 200,000, “the losses by now have exceeded 100,000: 61,207 people were killed and 49,368 were injured”

These are ludicrous figures. Leave to one side that he quotes precise numbers, the Defence Minister asks us to believe that the Ukrainian army is suffering more dead than wounded! In WWII the ratio of American troops wounded in combat to those killed was roughly 3:1. Now, with advances in medicine and safety equipment, it is about 10:1. Given that Ukrainian troops are mostly armed and equipped by NATO countries, Shoigu is talking out of his ushanka (Russian hat).

Will the Russian public buy it? Increasingly not. Even in a country where the media is tightly controlled there’s only so much suspension of disbelief available. The sinking of the Moskva was caused by ammunition exploding? Oh dear. Snake Island was evacuated as a goodwill gesture? Hmmmm. The Crimean airbase exploded because someone was smoking? Really? And now we need conscription because we’re winning and killing so many Ukrainians? What is Russian for “Yer having a laugh”?

The traffic to the Aviasales website suggests not everyone is convinced. Nor are the growing number of soldiers who are refusing orders. Kremlin denials that this is happening have been somewhat undermined by the Russian parliament rushing through amendments that stiffen punishments for those who surrender, desert, or refuse to fight during a period of mobilisation.  

Then there’s the upcoming referenda in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine – the Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ and regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The Kremlin already knows the results – they will vote to become “legally” part of Russia.

These moves are almost certainly all linked to the catastrophically poor performance of the Russian military culminating in the rout at Kharkiv. They are a sign of desperation. They show that Putin is more frightened of the increasingly rabid nationalists on his flank than he is of the public mood even if that is souring.

If the Ukrainian territory is annexed after the referenda then, under Russian law, conscripts can be sent there to fight. Moscow will also claim that any attempt by Ukraine to regain territory is an attack on sovereign Russian territory and that it has the right to defend itself, and….escalate.

This is what is behind Putin’s sinister threat – “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and in some components more modern than those of the NATO countries.” He didn’t say “nuclear” but that’s what he meant and why he added: “This is not a bluff.”  He is gambling that this will frighten NATO countries into slowing, even halting, support for Ukraine. There’s a hard decision coming for some of them. Do they allow NATO weapons to be fired by Ukrainians into what the Kremlin now says is Mother Russia? Putin may even hope his flailing decisions lead to a ceasefire allowing him the time and space to plan the next assault in a few years’ time. He could try and spin that as a victory. It would be a hard sell.

And the “poor bloody infantry”? Morale must be rock bottom. There will be Russian soldiers on the front lines who expected to be discharged this autumn and winter when their military contracts were supposed to end. Not with partial mobilisation they won’t. At best they may at last get some leave – in which case they will go home, and their families will then find out even more about what is going on. Arriving at the freezing front lines to replace them will be thousands of men who probably never wanted or expected to fight – certainly not in Ukraine. Facing them will be the steely determination of highly motivated Ukrainians, and behind them a nation praying that Western resolve does not falter in the tests to come.

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