Ukraine

[Dalisclock]

Since conscription began--

* At least 5 recruitment centres in Russia have been set on fire.

As a former military Recruiter, a small part of me is wondering if the recruiters(who have to be under intense pressure considering low recruitment numbers during this whole thing) weren't invovled in at least one of those. Maybe it's because while I worked USN recruiting I occasionally fantasized about lighting my office on fire for some small catharsis for all the shit we had to deal with on a daily basis.

This is also in light of rumors that front line troops were apparently sabotaging their own vehicles so they couldn't be sent to the fighting and the abymsal performance of the Russian forces in the field who were issued shitty equipment, expired rations, given apparently no notice they were actually invading and seem keen on stealing washing machines. Oh, and apparently the payments they were being offered isn't actually being paid.

 

[meiam]

As a former military Recruiter, a small part of me is wondering if the recruiters(who have to be under intense pressure considering low recruitment numbers during this whole thing) weren't invovled in at least one of those. Maybe it's because while I worked USN recruiting I occasionally fantasized about lighting my office on fire for some small catharsis for all the shit we had to deal with on a daily basis.

This is also in light of rumors that front line troops were apparently sabotaging their own vehicles so they couldn't be sent to the fighting and the abymsal performance of the Russian forces in the field who were issued shitty equipment, expired rations, given apparently no notice they were actually invading and seem keen on stealing washing machines. Oh, and apparently the payments they were being offered isn't actually being paid.

If story of recruiter being shoot keep coming out, then yeah I could see a lot of office being set on fire by the people in charge.

I wonder who man those centers, they need all the experience troop on front line and they can't exactly staff them with with wounded or you end up with a starship trooper situation.

 

[Dalisclock]

If story of recruiter being shoot keep coming out, then yeah I could see a lot of office being set on fire by the people in charge.

I wonder who man those centers, they need all the experience troop on front line and they can't exactly staff them with with wounded or you end up with a starship trooper situation.

I can only speak for the US Navy so take that with as much salt as you like but for the USN you had guys who picked it as thier job out of the gate, and people like me who were assigned to recruiting after a tour of duty(3 or 4 years) at sea or part of a seagoing unit. The USN has Sea Duty(mostly ships but sometimes Air Wings) and Shore Duty which is often at a base somewhere and you Alternate between them assuming you stay in for more then a few years. Recruiting was a shore duty job so presumably staffed by people who had a few years of sea duty under their belt and thus knew thier job pretty well. People who liked recruiting or disliked ships enough could apply to make recruiting their permanent job and if they got it they'd just rotate between recruiting districts stateside after that instead of doing a sea-shore-etc rotation.

No idea how Russia does it though. Keep in mind the US military is all volunteer while Russia has some amount of required national service so I imagine that changes the dynamic of what they have to deal with. As of right now there is no conscription in the US military, is unlikely to be any for the foreseeable future and there hasn't been fir 50 years at this point. The US would have to drastically change how it did business in that regard to go back to conscription. At best the US military could stop loss people on active duty and call up reservists, maybe call up the Individual Ready Reserve each service member agree to in thier enlistment contract but that only applies till 8 years from the date of initial enlistment anyway.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

As of right now there is no conscription in the US military, is unlikely to be any for the foreseeable future and there hasn't been fir 50 years at this point. The US would have to drastically change how it did business in that regard to go back to conscription. At best the US military could stop loss people on active duty and call up reservists, maybe call up the Individual Ready Reserve each service member agree to in thier enlistment contract but that only applies till 8 years from the date of initial enlistment anyway.

You forgot 'giving blank cheques to PMCs' and also 'outsourcing as many auxilliary services as you can get away with'.

As for conscription... yeah, no country that's gone all-volunteer military is going to be able to introduce conscription unless the wheels have completely fallen off... and, of course, all the pro-conscription shills never seem to ask these actual all-volunteer militaries what they think of the idea (mostly they hate it, and will keep hating it until they've run out of warm bodies and forced to accept it as the last resort... that they still hate)... the accepted wisdom being that unless you need a lot of half-arsed groundpounders who don't even want to be there, it's better to just stick to being all volunteer.

 

[Thaluikhain]

As for conscription... yeah, no country that's gone all-volunteer military is going to be able to introduce conscription unless the wheels have completely fallen off... and, of course, all the pro-conscription shills never seem to ask these actual all-volunteer militaries what they think of the idea (mostly they hate it, and will keep hating it until they've run out of warm bodies and forced to accept it as the last resort... that they still hate)... the accepted wisdom being that unless you need a lot of half-arsed groundpounders who don't even want to be there, it's better to just stick to being all volunteer.

While I'm not disagreeing with that, conscription seems to have worked fairly well for Argentina during the Falklands War. The military had all sorts of other problems, and the British forces were just better, of course.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

While I'm not disagreeing with that, conscription seems to have worked fairly well for Argentina during the Falklands War.

Debatable. Very Debatable... especially according to some of the conscripts.

And of course, even though there were a lot of conscripts involved the Argentinian military still had a solid core of professional personnel. Maybe if they'd used more of their career personnel instead of conscripts we'd be talking about the Malvinas War.

 

[Thaluikhain]

And of course, even though there were a lot of conscripts involved the Argentinian military still had a solid core of professional personnel. Maybe if they'd used more of their career personnel instead of conscripts we'd be talking about the Malvinas War.

Oh sure, you don't want a full conscript army, you need the solid core of professionals to wrap the conscripts around. If I squint my brain a bit it's not too different from a solid core of NCOs in volunteer armies.

 

[Silvanus]

According to the Interior Minister of Georgia, the number of Russians crossing into Georgia has risen to 10,000 per day.

According to the Kazakh government, the number of Russians who crossed into Kazakhstan since mobilisation was announced is ~98,000.

Visas are not required to cross from Russia to Georgia or Kazakhstan. But bloody hell, those numbers.

 

[Satinavian]

As for conscription... yeah, no country that's gone all-volunteer military is going to be able to introduce conscription unless the wheels have completely fallen off.

Sweden reintroduced conscription in 2017 without much problems.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

...the accepted wisdom being that unless you need a lot of half-arsed groundpounders who don't even want to be there, it's better to just stick to being all volunteer.

We're well past the era where you stick a rifle in a guy's hands and tell him to take that hill or die trying. Current-day warfare needs too much cooperation and coordination for objectives to be accomplished; someone who doesn't want to be there and doesn't care about those objectives will literally be more harmful to the effort than if he wasn't there at all.

Sweden reintroduced conscription in 2017 without much problems.

Have the conscripts been tested in actual combat?

 

[Thaluikhain]

We're well past the era where you stick a rifle in a guy's hands and tell him to take that hill or die trying. Current-day warfare needs too much cooperation and coordination for objectives to be accomplished;

Depends who you are fighting and whether or not they've got a proper volunteer force themselves, though.

Though, getting a bit off-topic, but I wonder how far back that was a workable idea. Volunteer, professional armies have been defeating unmotivated and ill-trained conscripts for centuries.

 

[Silvanus]

Sweden reintroduced conscription in 2017 without much problems.

I'd guess that's purely defensive, no? Meaning the conscripts have a very low chance of actual combat, which probably informs the level of public acceptance.

I doubt Swedish conscripts are involved in Mali.

 

[Eacaraxe]

So. We're just going to yarble about conscription and the ethics of conscription, and refugee numbers, and completely ignore Nord Stream 1 and 2 getting bombed huh?

NPR's reporting.

Russia-Ukraine War: Leaks in Undersea Gas Pipelines After Explosions Point to Sabotage, Officials Say (Published 2022)

Ukraine and Poland blamed Russia after blasts were recorded and two gas pipelines were ruptured under the Baltic Sea. The sudden leaks deepened uncertainty about energy security in Europe.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/nord-stream-gas-pipelines-damage-russia/

Can't imagine who would've had a vested interest in doing that. Certainly no one who made nondescript plausibly deniable threats about this exact scenario in February.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Can't imagine who would've had a vested interest in doing that.

Frankly, it is a deeply, deeply weird move however you swing it.

Germany committed to ending the importation of Russian gas, and in response Russia already cut supplies. No gas was being pumped through those pipelines anyway. Even if that wasn't true, repairing the damage wouldn't be that difficult given the wealth and engineering expertise available to the countries involved.

In terms of who would have the capability and willingness to do it though, I'm banking on Russia more than the US. Russia has demonstrated a significant capability to carry out acts of sabotage within Europe. It blew up a bunch of Bulgarian ammunition depots quite recently. For the US to blow up an unused oil pipeline run by one of its major allies would be a tremendous diplomatic risk for no real benefit.

 

[Silvanus]

So. We're just going to yarble about conscription and the ethics of conscription, and refugee numbers, and completely ignore Nord Stream 1 and 2 getting bombed huh?

NPR's reporting.

Russia-Ukraine War: Leaks in Undersea Gas Pipelines After Explosions Point to Sabotage, Officials Say (Published 2022)

Ukraine and Poland blamed Russia after blasts were recorded and two gas pipelines were ruptured under the Baltic Sea. The sudden leaks deepened uncertainty about energy security in Europe.

www.nytimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/nord-stream-gas-pipelines-damage-russia/

Can't imagine who would've had a vested interest in doing that. Certainly no one who made nondescript plausibly deniable threats about this exact scenario in February.

American responsibility is... one of the few scenarios that make sense.

Europe has wanted to transition away from oil at a slow, comfortable pace, avoiding domestic economic pain. Almost no powers in Europe would have had an interest in doing this.

Russia itself owned the infrastructure and derived an enormous amount of revenue from it. Revenue which was threatened by sanctions/the accelerated move to renewables and may not have lasted too far into the future. I suppose its conceivable that Russia may have perpetrated it in order to fuck over European energy supplies, believing that their revenue wouldn't have lasted anyway. But I really doubt it. Their M.O. this far has been economic blackmail: doing this and denying responsibility goes directly against that.

That leaves... the US, or an unidentified other party (well, or Ukraine I suppose). The US has a great deal to gain. Cripple Russia's ability to deal with the sanctions, and their future revenue sources, with Europe feeling the pain instead of America.

 

[Eacaraxe]

American responsibility is... one of the few scenarios that make sense.

Europe has wanted to transition away from oil at a slow, comfortable pace, avoiding domestic economic pain. Almost no powers in Europe would have had an interest in doing this.

Russia itself owned the infrastructure and derived an enormous amount of revenue from it. Revenue which was threatened by sanctions/the accelerated move to renewables and may not have lasted too far into the future. I suppose its conceivable that Russia may have perpetrated it in order to fuck over European energy supplies, believing that their revenue wouldn't have lasted anyway. But I really doubt it. Their M.O. this far has been economic blackmail: doing this and denying responsibility goes directly against that.

That leaves... the US, or an unidentified other party (well, or Ukraine I suppose). The US has a great deal to gain. Cripple Russia's ability to deal with the sanctions, and their future revenue sources, with Europe feeling the pain instead of America.

That, and Russian plans were certainly to resume operation once either hostilities ended, or the EU withdrew support for Ukraine. Damaging or destroying the pipeline knocks that bargaining chip off the table, which is the only presumptive reason any actor would have to attack it. It was in Russia's strategic interest to, if anything, protect the pipeline...without it, Russia has little to no leverage against the EU.

Which is why there's little doubt in my mind the US did it. Burn the ships on the EU's behalf, as it were; without Nord Stream 1 or 2 in operation, the EU has no incentive to negotiate with Russia independently of the US for an easing of sanctions throughout the winter.

That or some ecoterrorist dipshit stupid enough to bull bait nuclear reprisal over a goddamn pipeline, in some Tom Clancy wankfest fantasy scenario.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Sweden reintroduced conscription in 2017 without much problems.

Sweden only drafts a tiny proportion of its population though, just enough to make up military shortfalls (and Sweden has a tiny military in manpower terms). Conscription in Sweden is otherwise functionally similar to conscription in the US, the government keeps records of people who are eligible for conscription in the event of a general mobilization.

But the main thing is cultural. Sweden since the second world war has pursued a policy of strict neutrality. That meant not joining any defense alliances, which meant not enjoying the protection of those defense alliances and thus being vulnerable to hypothetical foreign invasion. It's not just that Sweden has conscription, its military doctrine was built from the ground up around being as hard as possible to invade. There's a reason why the Swedish main battle tank for about 30 years looked like this.

The popularity of conscription in countries like Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Finland is due to the unspoken contract around it, that the only time conscripts would be called upon to fight is in direct defense of their own country against a foreign invasion.

Now that Sweden is joining NATO, I guess there's kind of an open question about what happens to conscription now, but I suspect it will be kept in some form just to make up that military manpower shortfall.

 

[Terminal Blue]

That, and Russian plans were certainly to resume operation once either hostilities ended, or the EU withdrew support for Ukraine.

That may have been the plan (although I doubt it) but it wasn't going to happen.

Again, Germany had already committed publicly to end importation of Russian gas. Russia cutting the supply only accelerated the inevitable.

 

[Silvanus]

Again, Germany had already committed publicly to end importation of Russian gas. Russia cutting the supply only accelerated the inevitable.

Germany had committed to doing so... over an extended timescale that may have outlasted the war. Russia cutting the supply accelerated it, but was also entirely within Russia's control-- they could resume. Now they can't. At least not immediately.

Not counting Russia out, mind you. I can see motivations there too. But they look clearer on the American side right now.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Sweden reintroduced conscription in 2017 without much problems.

*throws up hands*

There's always one.