The apparent fact that they are mobilizing "cannon fodder" instead of trained fully equipped Operational Maneuver Groups worries me even more than the reverse would.
They truly can't be completely our of front line units so are they that paranoid, that understaffed, or that crazy to expect a general set of hostilities Europe wide which would inevitably escalate to nuclear weapons release?
The odd aspect of Putin's partial mobilization is that in 2018 Russia did begin forming a full "mobilization reserve", akin to the Select Reserve in the US military.
But here's the thing about Select Reserve activations and deployments: entire units are called up, not piecemeal individual personnel. Yet I have found no depiction in Russian media of reserve units being deployed to Ukraine.
Reserve units already have uniforms, weapons, essential supplies. They are already largely trained.
If the Russian army has a functional mobilization reserve force, looking at Russian media it is not being deployed to Ukraine.
If the Russian army does not have a functional mobilization reserve force, then the general state of military readiness in Russia is likely a whole lot less than the West might think.
For Putin, the sobering reality of nuclear weapons is that he cannot use them without being ended by them.
For all of the jingoistic rhetoric early on about the need to "denazify" Ukraine, the reality has always been that Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor in this war. There can be no plausible justification for Russia resorting to nukes under those circumstances.
If Putin does order a nuclear strike, the likely scenarios all end with him out of power (and quite possibly dead): his generals could refuse the order and stage a coup, there could be a mass mutiny among the Russian military leading to a coup, or the nuclear attacks are carried out, leading to nuclear reprisals from NATO, at which point there would again be a coup d'etat.
The unspoken agreement about nuclear weapons even during the Cold War was that they were weapons of last resort. A conventionally victorious army has no need to use nuclear weapons.
If Putin launches even a tactical nuclear strike, it amounts to an admission that the Russian Army has lost the war in Ukraine. Faced with that reality, it would not be long before someone within Putin's inner circle decided that Putin had become a liability and needed to be removed.
The apparent fact that they are mobilizing "cannon fodder" instead of trained fully equipped Operational Maneuver Groups worries me even more than the reverse would.
They truly can't be completely our of front line units so are they that paranoid, that understaffed, or that crazy to expect a general set of hostilities Europe wide which would inevitably escalate to nuclear weapons release?
The odd aspect of Putin's partial mobilization is that in 2018 Russia did begin forming a full "mobilization reserve", akin to the Select Reserve in the US military.
https://iz-ru.translate.goog/706732/bogdan-stepovoi-aleksei-ramm-evgenii-andreev/v-rezerv-po-kontraktu?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
But here's the thing about Select Reserve activations and deployments: entire units are called up, not piecemeal individual personnel. Yet I have found no depiction in Russian media of reserve units being deployed to Ukraine.
Reserve units already have uniforms, weapons, essential supplies. They are already largely trained.
If the Russian army has a functional mobilization reserve force, looking at Russian media it is not being deployed to Ukraine.
If the Russian army does not have a functional mobilization reserve force, then the general state of military readiness in Russia is likely a whole lot less than the West might think.
And if their readiness is that bad, well, that is another explanation for all the nuclear bluster talk.
Remember their nuke powered cruise missile, a project we abandoned in the early 60s (the "crowbar" because it was so simple).
Project Pluto
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1565615/posts
"The nastiest weapon ever invented"
For Putin, the sobering reality of nuclear weapons is that he cannot use them without being ended by them.
For all of the jingoistic rhetoric early on about the need to "denazify" Ukraine, the reality has always been that Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor in this war. There can be no plausible justification for Russia resorting to nukes under those circumstances.
If Putin does order a nuclear strike, the likely scenarios all end with him out of power (and quite possibly dead): his generals could refuse the order and stage a coup, there could be a mass mutiny among the Russian military leading to a coup, or the nuclear attacks are carried out, leading to nuclear reprisals from NATO, at which point there would again be a coup d'etat.
The unspoken agreement about nuclear weapons even during the Cold War was that they were weapons of last resort. A conventionally victorious army has no need to use nuclear weapons.
If Putin launches even a tactical nuclear strike, it amounts to an admission that the Russian Army has lost the war in Ukraine. Faced with that reality, it would not be long before someone within Putin's inner circle decided that Putin had become a liability and needed to be removed.