Russians may not be able to dismantle Putin’s war machine but they can refuse to oil and service it

“Do you know what tampons are for”? According to one Russian army officer they are to shove “right into the bullet wound and the tampon expands and applies pressure to the wound”. The officer is telling a group of new conscripts about the realities of the front line: no sleeping bags, no medical kits – “ You’ll have to bring it all yourselves boys!”. She is clearly at the end of her tether and her voice almost breaks when she tells them, “Guys, take care of your own selves, please.”

Social media is awash with videos of angry, dishevelled, recently conscripted Russian men in ill-fitting uniforms railing against how they are being treated. There are examples of whole conscripted units being transported into fields or forests near the border with Ukraine and simply left there without food, shelter, or medicine.  

Even some professional troops are speaking out. One soldier from Russia’s 205^th Brigade said when they first deployed in late February, they were told they were going on exercises and, once they got to the front, they “didn’t have normal munitions, no flak jackets or helmets”.

The steady trickle of evidence of low morale and logistical issues suffered by the Russian army since day one of the invasion of Ukraine has become a deluge since Putin’s partial conscription was announced in early September. There are numerous reports of desertion, refusing to fight, and sabotage of equipment. Some soldiers are voluntarily being captured by Ukrainian forces despite the Russian parliament passing a bill making this punishable with 10 years in prison. They may not know they statistics, but they know their chances of survival on the front lines are not good. The wounded to killed ratio on their side appears to be around four to one whereas the U.S. military ratio in Afghanistan was ten to one reflecting both advances in battlefield medicine and having air cover to evacuate soldiers to hospitals. The Russians appear to have neither.

Back home there has been a spate of attacks on recruitment offices and a mass exodus of men of fighting age, which in the chaotic manner of the military bureaucracy seems to include men over 55, the disabled, mentally unstable people, and in one instance, a completely blind man.  Several hundred thousand men have fled abroad, unwilling to go to Ukraine, and fearing 10 years in prison for refusing to fight under legislation passed shortly after the call was announced.

In some of this there are echoes of 1917, although that does not make a collapse of the army a probability. In 1917, the Russian military, then, as now, was commanded by an officer class which showed little regard for ordinary troops. It was also poorly equipped with many soldiers armed with rifles which were decades old, a factor now plaguing the modern army. Throughout the war, the Czar Nicholas II’s factories struggled to produce sufficient arms and ammunition for the front lines. The war effort was not helped by Nicholas fancying himself a master military strategist despite lack of experience in this field – an accusation which can now be levelled at Putin.

In 1914 and 1915, Russian soldiers fighting the Germans were mostly regular soldiers and reservists. They suffered massive losses and had to be supplemented by the Home Guard. By 1916, more and more of the soldiers were conscripts and as the war ground on increasing numbers began to surrender or desert. Up to March 1917 (when Nicholas abdicated) just under 200,000 men had been arrested for desertion in the combat regions, by August of 1917 the figure was 365,000 with many more detained deep inside Russia. The Czar had not been informed of how bad his personal situation as he believed there was an unbreakable mystical bond between him and the Russian people. After his abdication the bond was broken by a Bolshevik bullet.

The new government was foolish enough to try and continue the war. Soldiers would not advance, desertions soared, and whole units of pro-Bolshevik troops simply refused to go to the front, or, as Lenin put it they “voted for peace with their legs”. The Communists took over and pulled Russia out of the war.

1917 is not a template for 2022/23 but it is a guide about the unpredictability of events and what can happen when soldiers and the public will not cooperate with authority and when an army loses the will to fight. Most Russian troops in Ukraine are contract soldiers who signed up for a fixed term. Given the current situation it seems likely that more than usual are either trying to resign from their contracts or not renewing them. If so, then next year a greater percentage of front-line fighters will be conscripts.

The increasingly difficult position of the Russian military does not mean Putin will back down – he’s more likely to escalate. Either way the hyenas are waiting in the Kremlin’s wings to take over if the moment arises. Again, history is a guide, and a cautionary tale, of how high the stakes are in Moscow’s politics.

When Stalin died in 1953, the former spy chief Lavrentiy Beria was in the running to take over. Surprisingly, the weak charactered Georgy Malenkov became Supreme Leader, but Beria had a file on his former ally thick enough to keep him in line. But then Nikita Khrushchev outfoxed them both. He called a meeting of the Politburo at which it had been pre-agreed Beria would be accused of all manner of crimes (most of which he was guilty). A button was pressed, the guards burst in, and he was arrested, imprisoned, and then shot. Nine years later Khrushchev himself was ousted in a Politburo conspiracy was led by his protégé Leonid Brezhnev. Khrushchev was on holiday but urgently called back to Moscow where he was persuaded to “retire” on health grounds.

Putin knows all this and so cannot show weakness in case it encourages those around him to make similar moves. So escalation is more likely than de-escalation and levels of state violence against dissent are likely to increase taking Russia even deeper into an authoritarianism which threatens to become totalitarianism.

A popular uprising to unseat him does not look likely as he retains enough support among loyalists, and the state appears to have a firm grip on organised dissent. A greater threat comes from simply not obeying orders. They may not be able to dismantle the machine, but they can refuse to oil and service it.

Perhaps some of Russia’s hapless conscripts have read Carl Sandberg’s poem “The People, Yes”. It includes the line “Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come”. There are still enough Russians for Putin to try and throw into the killing fields, but they are not going gently into that dark night.

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life