Long before Russia's Feb 2022 invasion of Ukraine, stories had filtered out from the low-level conflict in the Donbas that Russian forces relied on mobile 'phones for their field communications. They had - and still have - pitifully scant military means: the budget for radios etc was (by universal acknowledgement) long since looted in the great Russian tradition of wholesale embezzlement. Use of private mobiles is certainly convenient (everybody has one, and smart 'phones can do all sorts of useful things) but it comes with a dreadful drawback: they are not at all secure, and have been the cause of numerous successful Ukrainian artillery strikes, often of high precision.
More than two years on, the Duma has passed a new law making any use of "domestic gadgets" (specifically including mobiles and tablets) at the front subject not only to punishment but - uniquely in Russia - summary imprisonment without any form of hearing. This, I believe, is unconstitutional, FWIIW.
Reaction from the legion of Russian milbloggers has built over the days. The first line of hostility ran thus: we absolutely can't do without these gadgets; so the law will essentially be ignored, as per usual in Russia; but since literally every soldier has at least a mobile 'phone, it gives local commanders a means of simply banging up anyone they don't like. This was not the end of the matter, but let's pause for some context.
When I arrived in Moscow in the mid '90s to set up an office there, I was warned by my local (American) lawyer that like everyone else I would be vulnerable to arbitrary arrest / fines etc at any time, because in Russia there is a complex web of laws (not least financial regulations), many of them mutually inconsistent such that everyone is always in breach of something. It's just a kind of reserve power the authorities keep for themselves. The 'phone ban fits this model precisely.
Then, the milblogger objections gathered force. Firstly, they noted that most of the very many complaints raised by Russian soldiers about their dreadful conditions, reach the public domain via clips recorded on ... mobile 'phones! How convenient to see this choked off. Then, it occurred to them that the new law could be used to fill the ranks of the penal battalions that are thrown into the front line in what are known as "meat attacks", for many months now the primary tactic of the grinding Russian. There is nothing but grass roots hostility to this new law.
This isn't just a case of "how typically Russian" - it's like Russia to the nth power: a parody, a complete reductio ad absurdum. You might say they've been doing things this way for centuries, and it's true. But it doesn't sow the seeds of an ultimately sustainable way of carrying on. Only the enforcement troops positioned to shoot waverers, coupled with deep Russian fatalism, makes this thing work at all.
ND
10 comments:
"many of them mutually inconsistent such that everyone is always in breach of something"
We found it just the same when working as contractors for a large company that does a huge amount of outsourced work for HMG - the procedures were so many and so arcane that you'd get nothing done if you obeyed all of them.
Very useful for them, as if they wanted to be rid of you there was always something you were in breach of. I tend to think it wasn't accidental.
What think you of this? I don't pretend to understand exactly what the changes are, but at least I have plenty of iodine tablets.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/07/29/preparing-against-putin-team-behind-joe-biden-announce-expanded-nuclear-weapon-deployment-for-uk-and-europe/
The laws in the UK are designed so there is always something to get you on. See Tommy Robinson and Anti-Terror legislation used at a port (of exit).
Some people question Putin's grasp of strategy, but even his harshest critics must acknowledge that he has conducted an absolutely devastating and merciless campaign of attrition against Russia.
The devastating attrition is Germany's.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/18/german-living-standards-plummeted-after-russia-invaded-ukraine-say-economists
"The energy shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to the biggest collapse in German living standards since the second world war and a downturn in economic output comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, a stark assessment has found."
"Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people,” Solzhenitsyn told the German magazine Der Spiegel in a 2007 interview, when Putin was still president. “And he started to do what was possible, a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard-pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments."
Fri 4 Apr 2008 13.33 BST - The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today repeated his warning that Moscow would view any attempt to expand Nato to its borders as a “direct threat”. Russia has been angered by the 26-nation military alliance’s eastward growth, and Nato yesterday said Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, could one day join.
Can't say we weren't told.
Nice try, Anonymous. Call back when Germany has lost half a million men.
"You might say they've been doing things this way for centuries, and it's true. But it doesn't sow the seeds of an ultimately sustainable way of carrying on."
So Russia's been a shambles forever (read Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 - he was a Red Army artillery captain) yet it's still there.
On the other hand, the UK has only been doing truly nation-wrecking things post-WW2, and I'm not sure what we'll be like, or even if there'll be a "we", by 2124.
At the moment, for example, our police are arresting, and our media attacking, the very people - working class Brits - who'd be first to be conscripted. I use the word "our" in its broadest sense.
I worked with Russians in the late eighties and three things struck me about them, they were well educated with an intellectual outlook, they were corrupt to their core and they were unbelievably fatalistic, simply felt they had no power or control over their place in the world.
Anon, that's a very good summary. For balance (along with your point about education), I'd add that there's a tremendous humanity about them in all the bleakness, sullen cultural arrogance and alcoholic fug.
But the sum total is periodically lethal to anyone within lashing-out reach. As suggested before:
"their [assumed cultural] superiority means they shouldn't have to raise a finger to get their due; it should just sort-of naturally accrue to them. At the national level this explains why, instead of being outward-looking and purposeful as other "exceptionalist" nations tend to be, Russia is reactive and basically just resentful. (Why doesn't the world simply recognise their innate superiority, and award them their place in the sun / seat at top table?)"
[ http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2024/06/general-popov-2-corruption-in-russia.html ]
From August 1914:
"Have you ever seen a junior officer in the Russian army induce his seniors to change their minds by making passionate speeches at them? On a minor issue a well-argued case or a well-written document can sometimes be effective, but never in a big thing like this. You don't really believe that you're going to shake them up and make them see reason all at once, do you? I warn you: you're standing on the edge of a bottomless pool— and not a pool of water either, but pitch. There won't even be a ripple to show where you fell in. You'll only destroy yourself."
"What if I do? They can't do any more than send me to command a regiment. And I wasn't a bad regimental commander in my time."
Svechin was two years younger than Vorotyntsev, but it was impossible to tell this from his manner of speaking, "Fine — except that there will be a bunch of thickheaded fools above you, hindering you at every step. They'll give you idiotic orders, you'U have to carry them out and you'll pay for it in soldiers' lives. You'll end by sending me a telegram at General Headquarters begging me to save you from these imbeciles and get you out of an impossible position! No, my dear fellow, the people who get things done around here are not the rebels but the doers. They go about it discreetly and they don't make a lot of fuss, but they get things done. For instance, if in one day I manage to alter a couple of stupid orders so that they make sense, and by doing so justify a decision made by a brave regimental commander or save a battalion of sappers from being needlessly sent to their deaths, then I reckon my day hasn't been wasted. And with you working alongside me, we could probably see to it that two more orders were redrafted on the right lines — perhaps even four! It's senseless to try to fight the authorities; the way to deal with them is to steer them discreetly in the right direction. You can be more use to Russia here than anywhere else. If you get yourself kicked out of headquarters they'll simply send in someone else worse. Why let that happen?"
...
"No doubt you're right," Vorotyntsev replied with an obstinate grin on his emaciated but still keen and lively face. "But if you had only been through what I've just been through. . ..I'm determined to see to it that, come what may, the truth and nothing but the truth gets hammered out today."
"You must realize that the grand-duke is simply waiting for the arrival of the telegram announcing the capture of Lvov. They're all waiting for that telegram. And that telegram will simply be used to obliterate the whole Samsonov affair. They'll set the bells ringing all over Russia to celebrate our own incompetence — because the truth is we had the Austrian army in the grip of a pincer movement and let it go, so that when we captured Lvov it was empty."
"You might have convinced me and I might have kept my mouth shut if this were purely a military matter. But this isn't a military problem any longer, don't you see? It's a moral issue. To drive one's people unprepared to slaughter is something far beyond the considerations of mere strategy. 'He who endures to the end . . !' Thanks to them, we are the ones who have to suffer and endure — to the bitter end! And none of them even go to the front line to see for themselves! They're quite ready to endure four or five more massive defeats on this scale—but by then only the Lord above will be able to help them!"
"Even so, you won't do any good," Svechin insisted firmly, hissing the words through clenched teeth. "Nothing would be changed and you'd simply get a bloody nose. Russia is doomed to be governed by fools; she knows no other way. I know what I'm talking about. The only thing to do is keep your head down and get on with the job."
@ AndrewZ I presume you mean Ukraine when you are talking about losing half-a-million men? It sounds a little high, but it must be in the ball-park.
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