“The empire strikes back”: a new attack by the military

The Kremlin’s main weapon has always been the same: callousness and cruelty towards its own citizens in general, and towards soldiers in particular. The same attitude that has been professed and proclaimed for centuries by its commanders: “Women will give birth to more!”

Field military registration and enlistment offices (today we see similar ones on the border with Georgia and Kazakhstan, only they are called “mobile”) during World War II were a powerful tool for army recruitment. The Soviet authorities betrayed the citizens of their country twice during the war. The first time, in 1941, when they were left unprotected in front of the advancing Nazi army, and the second time in 1943, when those who had survived the occupation were declared traitors and traitors suspected of collaborating with the Germans. The Soviet army units came to the liberated villages, and among those units there was obligatorily a unit which registered and documented all the men of conscription age. From those recruits shock troops were immediately formed to break through the front in a given area. These unfortunate lads were not even changed into military uniform – there was no point. So they were thrown into the attack in black country scrolls. I could not understand who the Ukrainians were talking about “black scrolls” (a scroll is a jacket, a peacoat). Which scrolls, whose scrolls are they talking about? Or are they talking about scrolls – manuscripts? It turned out to be the name of those who are not sorry to be sent to the slaughter, but to whom it is a pity to give a uniform overcoat. Losses among these “black-coat soldiers” were terrible for conventional warfare strategy and tactics, but acceptable to the warlords of the Russian military school.

The years go by, but in Russia, in essence, nothing changes. All the “generic traumas of the people”, no matter how hard one tries to hide them, come out at the first complication of the situation. And today the Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, Mari and Erzyan lads are being hounded to slaughter, without any regard for their losses, just as they were eighty years ago. Hunted down, sacrificed to the illusory ideas of the insane Kremlin Napoleon in Ward 6 of the Russian Federal Asylum.

“The Ukronazis want to destroy us, to trample the memory of our grandfathers who reached Berlin! They dream of conquering Karmaskaly and Aksubayevo, making us Europeans and forcing us into same-sex marriage!”

Rubbish, would you say? Yes, nonsense that no more than 20% of the mobilised believe. The rest spit contemptuously, some laugh. But they serve! They do! They do not believe that the situation can be improved today by changing the government in their republics. That it is possible to live peacefully for the good of their country, without seizing foreign territory, without killing innocents and without being killed themselves. “Maybe I won’t get killed, I’ll survive, I’ll come back – and everything will be the same. And if I refuse, then prison, shame. Where to go, how to live, can’t hide until the end of days!”

But so far the authorities are more pushy than using the force of law. After all, there are not so many, or rather few, criminal cases initiated “for evasion”. On the other hand, there are many precedents when, having “run over” a man subject to mobilization, the enlistment office as a result fines 3000 roubles and that is all. The mobilization machine can’t cope with its work, slips down heavily and sometimes collapses altogether. So the main thing for it is to report back, and then we’ll see! Now the prosecutor’s and judicial harangue is out of the question, it is necessary to drive the shaft and give the plan. After all, she does not work for the final result, but for accountability. The military enlistment office mechanism is busy catching Russian men in its net of wide cells, through which they can slip and avoid being sent to the trenches. It is possible to stay alive! As one guy from Krasnoyarsk who was drafted into the Russian Armed Forces told me: “I told the military commissar that my mother is Ukrainian, and that I cannot go to kill someone in Ukraine, Ukrainians are not my enemies! I won’t take the summons!”. Just like that I took it and said it openly. And what? He was fined and released.

In the footage of militaristic newsreels from recruitment points, flooding the Telegram-channels, recently we haven’t seen anything but heart-breaking scenes – snot, screaming, cursing, and drunken songs and dances… People used to say: “Drunkenness, hooliganism and mess! But they go in crowds to the buses that take them away into the gloomy unknown. And that Krasnoyarsk guy simply explained that he could not go to kill Ukrainians and would not accept a summons. And he was not put behind bars.  You say that no one can guarantee that he will be summoned again after some time. And then they’ll start pulling them in a serious way. And I’ll tell you, there’s no telling when that’ll be. And will it ever happen? During that time some of those who kept silent and went to war without complaint will already be lying as a lifeless body on a Ukrainian field or will return home crippled for the rest of their lives. So it makes sense to try to sit this one out.

And, guys, don’t make people laugh, don’t try, if you have a medical disability, to come to the District Military Commissariat on summons and prove to the military commissariat that a mistake has been made.  They’ll be rounded up straight away – it’s only natural in the current mobilisation campaign. “Get the hell out, we’ll sort it out later!” If anyone who has been summoned and returns to the recruiting office is returned, it is further evidence of the confusion and turmoil in the organisation of the District Military Commissariat’s work. When the Moloch of War cannot swallow all that it has bitten off, some of what it has bitten off may vomit up. But it will never lose its appetite. The goal of our president and the mythical Moloch is similar: grab everyone you can reach, throw them in without preparation to fill the holes on the front, or there will be a terrible end. Putin’s condition is close to hysteria, he has to save his own ass, who in this situation will understand the intricacies?