"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (2 Viewers)

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I find this map, showing the 4 regions that are undergoing the Russian referendum quite interesting:



The comparison of the pre-war regional boundaries with the occupied regions is of note. Roughly half of Donetsk and over one-third of Zaporizhzhia, including its capital, are still held by Ukraine.

Given the inevitable "yes" "vote" in the referendum results, I wonder if this is Putin's way of trying to strike a deal. "We'll only take the bits of the regions that we occupy. Kyiv can keep the rest." To Russian eyes this might seem like a sound deal. To everyone else, it's laughable.

Alternatively, Putin could go whole-hog and claim every square foot of all four regions. Doing that would make the referendum even more ridiculous since people in the Ukrainian-held regions won't be participating at all. However, it would give Putin the "justification" (in his mind) to keep pushing to take all the territory of all 4 regions. The problem with that approach is that he's singularly failed to achieve that goal to-date, so there's a risk that, by betting the farm, he may lose it all. One can only hope!!!
 
Got to love this:

Foreigners who fight for Russia 'given access to citizenship'
Earlier, we brought you the news that Putin had signed a new law meaning Russian soldiers who refuse to fight or disobey orders will now face ten years in prison.
Another law signed by the president today will grant foreigners who fight for the Russian military easier access to Russian citizenship.
Foreign citizens who sign a military contract of at least a year will be able to apply for citizenship without the usual requirements of being officially resident in the country for five years, local media reported.

Moscow has accused Kyiv of employing western mercenaries, claiming that foreigners rather than Ukrainians are doing the bulk of the fighting. Meanwhile, it's entirely legitimate for Moscow to employ foreign mercenaries...and to offer them a fast-track to citizenship.

The hypocrisy of Moscow is truly without limit.
 
LONDON, Sept 24 (Reuters) - The stridently pro-Kremlin editor of Russia's state-run RT news channel expressed anger on Saturday that enlistment officers were sending call-up papers to the wrong men, as frustration about a military mobilisation grew across Russia.

[...]

Now, it is also attracting criticism of the authorities from among the Kremlin's own official supporters, something almost unheard of in Russia since the invasion began seven months ago.

"It has been announced that privates can be recruited up to the age of 35. Summonses are going to 40-year-olds," the RT editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, railed on her Telegram channel.

"They're infuriating people, as if on purpose, as if out of spite. As if they'd been sent by Kyiv."

In another rare public sign of turmoil at the top, the Russian defence ministry said on Saturday the deputy minister in charge of logistics, four-star General Dmitry Bulgakov, had been replaced "for transfer to another role". It gave no further details.

[...]

Officials have said 300,000 troops are needed, with priority given to people with recent military experience and vital skills. The Kremlin has denied reports by two Russian news outlets based abroad - Novaya Gazeta Europe and Meduza - that the real target is more than 1 million.

Complaints about Russia's chaotic mobilization grow

Russia's first public mobilization since World War Two to shore up its faltering invasion of Ukraine has triggered a rush for the border by eligible men, arrests of protesters and criticism from the Kremlin's own official supporters.
www.reuters.com

It's as if the Apple Dumpling Gang are running the Russian military. These guys could screw up falling out of bed.
 
Thinking about the partial mobilization and a few thousand untrained, angry, drunk, and some even armed draftees at the front. Thinking about a lack of veteran officer corps. Supply chain difficulties limiting resupply from a questionable inventory. Could the thinking be that a bigger armed mob will work and everything will be over by Christmas?
It's going to be interesting.
 

The video clips could be edited etc, but what jumped out at me from the linked article was this:

In what is rapidly becoming a popular subgenre of Russian war videos, multiple clips depict Russian recruits getting hammered as they prepare to ship out for two weeks of basic training before being thrown onto the front lines.
Click to expand...

I know the Russian government claimed that these are prior-service members only, but only two weeks of refresher training? Their reserve drills are already much scantier than what we in America associate with our Reserves and NG/ANG.

The Russians don't seem to realize how much desperation they're telegraphing to the world with this move. They also don't seem to have considered that the survivors of this tranche of recruits will come home mentally broken, physically broken, angry at a government that would waste their lives so, or a combination of all the above. I suspect we're about to see a significant rise in desertions, atrocities, suicides, and fraggings in the Russian military.

Putin's basically doubling-down on a pair of deuces, eight-high.

I feel sorry for those guys. They're about to experience something shattering.

ETA: I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the info you've fed into this thread over the months.
 
Also, regarding avoiding the Russian draft, this morning on the radio to work BBC was reporting that the line of Russian vehicles waiting to enter Georgia was 10 km (6 miles) long.

These guys are voting with their tires.
 
"Putin's basically doubling-down on a pair of deuces, eight-high."

No, aces and eights- Dead Man's Hand.
 
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