A pragmatic compromise on the unpopular question of mobilization? A signal of the SMO transitioning to full-blown war? An indicator of Russia’s desparation, or of an effort to finally end the conflict as quickly and efficiently as possible?
Like to hear your thoughts comrades, especially comrades from Russia.
Ok but this doesn’t address the elephant in the room: Where the fuck is the regular Russian army?
Also if you can just send an additional 300k conscripts in there, why only now? And why just conspricts?
Problem with that war is that Russia really can’t fully commit its regular military since US vulture just wait for it to try something stupid, like they did with Azer-Armenia just now.
Syria, borders around Russia. The special military operation has a limit to the number of soldiers available, or else it becomes a full war. They’ll ask for volunteers probably.
Why only now? The first SMO phases had defeated the Ukraine military, they didn’t really need that many soldiers to maintain their operations. NATO is giving 50 billion to Ukraine, has sent thousands of NATO experienced “volunteers”, and is being commanded by NATO now. Ukraine’s “second” military mobilization is practically a NATO army. Scott Ritter was on the Greyzone and predicted that Russia needed at least 200k more soldiers to defeat the rebuilt UA-NATO army, so 300k should be more than enough.
The mobilized reservists will be used to replace professional active duty soldiers inside Russia itself. They will most likely not be sent to Ukraine, but they are meant to replace the more experienced and better trained ones who will. Russia only sent a fraction of its active duty forces to Ukraine when the SMO began. The reason why it is now doing a partial mobilization of reservists who were already trained and have served in the army before is so that they do not leave Russia’s other borders vulnerable by pulling too many active duty soldiers to Ukraine.
There are also more than enough volunteers who are asking to be allowed to contribute but it is better to mobilize already trained reservists than take enthusiastic but raw newbies.
This cannot be compared to the kinds of mobilizations that Ukraine has done where they have literally dragged men off the street and press ganged them into service. Ukraine is scraping the barrel, Russia has only just begun to escalate. Of course Russia also has more to worry about than just this conflict, it needs to be ready in multiple places in case NATO attacks. They have so far been cautious because they know they are dealing with unhinged maniacs in NATO and Russia needs to keep a majority of their forces and best equipment in reserve.
But NATO itself is becoming more and more directly involved in Ukraine and at the same time exhausting its supplies so Russia feels less threat elsewhere and is able to focus more here.