A key theme of Russian propaganda is the ability to fight indefinitely what the Kremlin calls a long war.

This campaign is aimed at fomenting the so called Ukraine fatigue in the West, no matter what you do, Moscow is telling Brussels and Washington, we will outweigh you. So why don’t you just cut your losses and push Ukraine to make peace by surrendering 1/5 of its territory to Russia.

But is Putin’s Russia really that strong?

Can its financial, economic, industrial and ultimately social systems, for years, sustained the increasingly weightier burden of war. And what about the most immediate need of the Russian war machine, the soldiers, the cannon fodder?

Well, it looks like neither the relentless press ganging nor the exorbitant sign up bonuses and salaries appear to attract enough men to make up for the staggering casualties on the front.

The first to plug the manpower gaps were reservists. That is, those who had served before or had military training in college. 300,000 of them were called up half a year into the war. Over two years later, those lucky to have survived are still in Ukraine.

Their wives and mothers have pleaded for their discharge, or at least a temporary leave, all in vain. The Ministry of Defense responded, your husbands and sons will come home either in body bags or When the war ends, whichever comes first. And by the way, the mobilization decree has not been officially rescinded, so reservists could be called up on the sly, selectively, without announcing another national mobilization.

The Kremlin has also raided prisons. Originally, the inmates were promised presidential pardons after half a year in the trenches, and the recruitment proceeded, gangbusters, thieves, bandits, murderers, rapists and ritualistic cannibals were signing up en masse to the point where the prison population was reduced by an estimated 58,000 last year, and a number of prisons had to be completely or partially closed. Yet once the pardons were replaced by probation and the six month service in Ukraine became an endless deployment. The flow of patriotic criminals began to dry up, no matter how much the wardens pressured the inmates,

and so Putin had to turn Russian military into a mercenary army, the sign up bonuses, which had been already over twice. The average monthly salary were more than doubled this past summer, but the actual payoffs are much larger since local authorities are expected by the Kremlin to sweeten the pot,

counting the bonus, a Russian private in Ukraine could earn 3.2 5 million rubles a year, or over three times the national average. If the US were to adjust its volunteers pay accordingly, a first year Army soldier would make over $178,000

a year.

Yet even this enormous purse is failing to generate cannon fodder in volumes that the Kremlin deems necessary. And the reason is the astounding casualty rate. Casualty rate, an estimated nearly 200,000 Russian soldiers killed, and a total between a 462,700

28,000, out of action that is killed or badly wounded since the beginning of the war in February 2022,

and so Putin had reached for the conscripts, pry zevniki or sorochniki in Russia. This is yet another of the innumerable tragedies of Putin’s criminal war, frightened, ill equipped, and did very little, if any, training hundreds of Russian conscripts were captured in Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region this past summer and fall for Putin, it was a forced choice, something that he would not have done if his back were not.

Up against the wall.

After the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan and Russia’s in Chechnya, there had been a strong and consistent opposition in society to deploying draftees in combat. So when early in the invasion of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense admitted that some conscripts had been sent to the front to assuage public opinion. Putin had pledged that the soldiers in the mandatory military service, that is, conscripts, would not participate in military activities, only military professionals, as he put it, would do the battle.

Yet, already a year later, in spring of 2023

the Russian parliament, the Duma, quietly changed the law to allow green horns to become these so called professionals by merely signing contracts immediately after being drafted, some 18 year olds would sign up out of the boys bravedo or under peer pressure, others were undoubtedly persuaded, quote, unquote, by their commanders.

This past August, conscripts were reported to have been sent to fight in Kursk as reinforcements immediately after enlisting

as the Kremlin is trying to field an estimated

30,000 to 40,000 troops necessary to push the Ukrainians out. Of course, more of such instant professionals will be sent into the trenches.

This year’s spring draft netted 150,000

conscripts, and the fall draft, which started on October 1, is likely to pull in at least as much

Putin’s insatiable long war needs more and more boys to send to the slaughter the.