To the village for the grandfather 

Dear grandfather, do God’s mercy, take me from here home to the village, there is no possibility for me, just death alone. Have pity on me, an unfortunate orphan, otherwise everyone beats me and I want to eat very much, and the boredom is such that it’s impossible to say, I’m crying all the time.

Vanka by A.P. Chekhov.

Do the appeals of Tatar women to the leadership of the country and to the command of the special military operation have any effect? These tearful “We kindly ask you to take action …” and all similar.

They can give hope, but most likely they will not bring a real change of the situation. This does not bother the leadership. The situation at the front is such that they almost stopped talking about denazification and demilitarization on TV. They talk more and more about the collective West, and about the Ukrainian offensive hanging over the russian army.

What is needed to improve the position of mobilized people at the front? First of all, good commanders, the second – good logistics, the third – a sufficient supply of manpower, soldiers who have been trained and skillfully handle modern weapons.

This is a simplified scheme, in fact, a lot of different things are needed, but we will not go into details. Let’s look at the three factors above. The first is that the junior officer level is largely killed, and the remaining commanders (squad level, company level) are a little demoralized. “A little” means that military regulations are not forgotten, but in practice they are difficult to apply due to accumulated fatigue, loss of confidence in victory, demoralizing losses of personnel and general disappointment with the course of the special military operation. Because of this, the facts of degradation frequently occur: drinking, hooliganism and what the army team calls a “mess” – loss of subordination, lack of discipline. Of course, the commanders are struggling with this the best way they can: they put violators in pits, beat them with sticks, and sometimes they even shoot (well, this is rarely used, we are not talking about the Wagner PMC, we are generally reluctant to remember it. Although there are detachments in the army – Kadyrov’s masters to beat, rape, shoot). With the top army leadership … if you follow the events, you have already noticed how often it is shuffled, how one general or another periodically disappear from the agenda in the media. This is not because they were killed, but simply they were displaced for failures! But it must be confessed, there are also enough killed generals. Their number has long ago exceeded the prescribed figures – so many generals and senior officers should not be killed. And if they are killed, then the reason is the inability or unwillingness of junior officers to organize the fulfillment of the assigned tasks. So generals and colonels have to take on the functions of starleys and captains.

Well, it seems we cleared out the situation with the commanders. We can sum it up in two words, “The situation is bad!”

Now about the logistics …  It can be assessed offhand in a similar way: it is “very bad!” This became clear even in the first days of the special military operation, when, due to the collapsed logistics, they had to leave the northern regions of Ukraine. Now this problem has not been completely eliminated, although some measures were taken – terrible losses forced them to study. Of course, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation still have a lot of tanks, planes, “Solntsepyoks”, “Calibers”, “Daggers”, “Shaheds”, shells, mines and other deadly things. However, not as much as there were in service a year ago, and not as much as is needed at the moment. The Ukrainians laughed: the most powerful lend-lease is Russian: it is a shame to say the number of tanks and armored vehicles that have been captured from the russian army. Plus, over the past six months, the trouble have increased with the storage of everything necessary for the troops: they just bring it in, store it – and then the Ukrainians fired a high-precision missile, and again there is a shortage. Of course, the commanders are trying to disperse military property and ammunition in schools, residential buildings and hospitals – the Ukrainians are trying not to fire into such objects. But our military do not always have such an opportunity, they are fighting not only in the cities, but also in the field, in the greenery, in a ravine or on the banks of a river.

And besides, the weapon can wear out (for example, an artillery barrel has a resource of use, if it is exceeded, then the range and accuracy of fire is reduced, the barrel needs to be changed). Tanks, armored vehicles, fuel trucks, army trucks need to be repaired.

Now the third position in the list of components of success in war is a sufficient number of trained manpower, soldiers who have been trained and are professionally proficient in modern weapons. Here, on the one hand, things seem to be going well, contract soldiers and mobilized people have been recruited and taught something. On the other hand, the quality of the recruits is far away from required. It turns out that the whole army’s vaunted reform  turned out in practice to be almost zilch. And at the present difficult moment, it demonstrated its complete worthlessness in replenishing the depleted ranks. There is no one to teach (all instructors are already at the front in combat units), there is no time (it is necessary urgently to plug holes, there is no time for preparation) and there is nothing to teach (the tactics of military operations in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have changed little over the past century, the theory of the notorious “fire shaft” is confessed – they simply drive soldiers to the slaughter in the same way).

The author does not pretend to the seriousness of the study in his statements, but he considers the overall picture exactly the same as it is outlined above. A modernized Russian army vehicle ran and ran, but for some reason parts and spare parts began to fall off from it on the way, then it creaked, twitched and, obviously, would soon stop completely. Of course, the enemy is also not all right, he does not have so much manpower, but Ukrainian commanders say they do not rely on numbers, on “cannon fodder”, and they are going to fight differently, in a new way. They are generally good enough at this.

Now let’s get back to our Tatar wives… Hopes are not so bright that the state authorities and the military command will do somersaults on the spot and change everything. If they could, they would have reformatted themselves long ago, prepared and rushed forward, but the author hardly believes in this. It seems that, on the contrary, they will try to win the war precisely at the expense of the “cannon fodder”, i.e. the civilian men driven or lured in the army.

Based on the results of our analysis, it appears that the commanders did not betray them, the commanders are in the same position. Your husbands, fathers and brothers were betrayed first of all by you, empty-headed chickens! You betrayed them when you let them go to the recruiting station, when you didn’t pull them back, you didn’t grab them by the hands, you didn’t lie across the threshold! Yes, you betrayed them even earlier, when you agreed to listen to the song “I’m russian!” and to raise your right hand in a German fascist salute to its refrain. Tatar girls called themselves russians – so carry the burden of the empire on your shoulders,   put the bodies of your husbands into the gaps in the fortress wall, endure, russian Tatar fools!

And, according to the author, your letters and appeals are unlikely to reach the main russian Grandfather.