Igor Zaytsev's blog

The article in Russian is here.

As the headline said, Putin wants to increase the payments for the soldiers and personnel deployed in Ukraine. His reasoning, if the article is correct, is goes like that: since they are serving abroad, and the exchange rates of US dollar to ruble fell significantly, then it would be logical to increase their payments. This is quite an insane logic, if you ask me — they aren’t paid in dollars, I suppose, but in rubles, so it would be reasonable to decrease their payments (assuming they spent them in Ukraine).

It is obvious this measure is intended to increase the morale of servicemen currently fighting in Ukraine, and to encourage new volunteers to enlist into Russian Army. The economy is able to support those payments, it seems. So in fact it have nothing to do with the dollar, but with the “voluntary mobilization” and “deserters” issues, I’ve wrote about earlier.

And I have to say, sometimes this kind of PR-acrobatics feels quite repulsive to my taste. It’s fine if the government regards its citizens like idiots, but only if it is in fact a smart government. But not when mediocre officials are one doing this, and especially not when the government is corrupt and incompetent. Maybe telling people the truth is not such a bad thing.