Igor Zaytsev's blog

Another spectacular failure of Russian Ministry of Defense of Russia (MoD) is the implementation of the “partial mobilization” plan implementation. I speculated, that the intent was first and foremost to mobilize the professional soldiers who have recently discontinued or breached their contracts with Russian MoD and other military related structures, like the National Guards. The publicized parameters for the mobilization support this theory. They list relevant combat experience as one of the main requirements.

In practice, there is no centralize system in place to conduct this kind of mobilization. Instead, the local “military commissariats” (“voenkomat” in Russian) –which are local military enlistment offices charged with enlistment and mobilization– are receiving the required number of reservists to be called into mobilization from the MoD. There are no specific names, just the number of people such local office receives according to the number of reservists registered in each area.

As I understand, the system works something like this: each military service able man (or a woman) required to register in their local voenkomat. Then this information is being passed up to their parent offices until it reaches the MoD itself. In the event of mobilization, the orders are coming down from the MoD until they reach the local voenkomats. So, the MoD has the general information and statistics, but it doesn’t actually manage the particulars than it comes down to the question of who is to be enlisted or mobilized. All it does is send down the mobilization orders according to the number of registered reservists in each federal republic, then region, then city, then local area.

The local voenkomats receive the only the number of people they are required to produce, but they are the ones who are tasked with choosing the specific individuals to be called to mobilization. For example, it may well be that the local area has 10,000 registered men. It was tasked to mobilize 100 (the 300,000 men mobilization is roughly 1% of the mobilization pull in Russia, as I’ve heard, hence the 100 which is 1% of 10,000). But only 50 of those 10,000 are actually combat experienced soldiers of required professions, who left the service in last few years. So, the rest 50 of those 100 could be the ones who haven’t any combat experience, or don’t have the required military profession, or left the active service decades ago.

It may also be that the local enlistment office has the required number of men who are young, combat experienced, and have the needed military profession. But the office personnel don’t have the means or competence or motivation to go through all the 10,000 registered men and choose the most suited ones among them.

So instead of mobilizing the professional soldiers, we hear of middle-aged men who served decades ago, or younger IT professionals who never served a day in their life, or people with health problems etc. And there are credible reports that some of the more suitable people who come voluntary to those enlistment offices and asked to be mobilized are sometimes sent back because the local bureaucrats don’t want to deal with the paperwork.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Western psyops operation against Russian speaking public is at full swing. They want to upgrade this Russian MoD’s made disaster into a full-blown crisis. They tell Russian people their sons, husbands and fathers are sent to slaughter. Since many Russians distrust their government to tell them the truth (and for good reason, obviously), they are naturally seeking alternative sources of information, and that is that they are getting.

By the way, there is a considerable young men flight from Russia. Specifically, I know of train from Moscow to Orenburg near the Kazakhstan border, to which all the tickets have been sold (which is highly unusual). It is happening, and it will have implications on the Russian economy. In general, the mood is not supportive of this debacle of mobilization, but most are going with it. But any unnecessary deaths of those mobilized, especially of the ones who aren’t suited to the criteria announced by Putin and the MoD, will have a stronger antagonizing effect on the Russian public. Putin, unwilling to clean up the swamp the Russian MoD has become, will lose a portion of his popular support. Not the support for the war (which is strong), but support for the current government. And people should make this distinction.

P.S. Prisoners exchange.

By the way, the recent prisoners exchange felt again as betrayal. Look up the Strelkov and Rybar telegram channels (in Russian) for details. The failures of the government are coming just coming one after another. And, as usual, there is an information vacuum coming from the government, leaving the people with the Ukrainian and Western produced narrative. By many it feels like betrayal of the Russian people core interests for the sake of some “diplomacy” and “good will gestures”. The most high-profile and the most evil ultra-nationalists were exchanged for the lest high profile allied soldiers plus one Poroshenko supporter, Medvedchuk in 4 to 1 ratio (50 Russian soldiers for 200 ultra-nationalists and foreign mercenaries). Which reinforces the impression that Putin and his government couldn’t care less for the Russian prisoners as long as they can play in diplomacy.