Drunk Russians

On American and British news reports it is common to omit or obscure a perpetrator’s identity, the reason for this being that if it were reported people would see that certain races are disproportionately responsible for particular crimes—and that is not permissible to be acknowledged in our society. On the other hand, you can see many video clips circulated on YouTube and Twitter that show true-to-life depictions of various crimes. The usual response to these video is that you should not generalise from that one instance (or a dozen instances); obviously, there are always some bad eggs and the videos select—in a biased way, possibly for political purposes—an unfair sample to demonise different races and religions.

Let us reverse the principle and apply it to the recent videos that show Russian conscripts drunk, involved in fights, and, in one case, in Dagestan, allegedly menacing the recruiters to the extent shots are fired in the air. The usual response from the pro-Russian side is that these are an unrepresentative sample—there are always some bad eggs—put about by pro-Ukraine accounts; and some will be largely made up or very old.

Well, reverse principle: if these were really exceptional events the Russian media would talk about them, it would be a “man bites dog story”—no fear about reporting it because it would be so rare (just like when a woman murders a child—it hardly ever, ever happens; it’s just downright against everything a woman is). If such events were an exception, the Russian media would highlight them and say, “Disgraceful and shocking behaviour in XXXX”. They don’t—and they don’t because they fear the truth, just like Western governments fear the truth about the black crime rate.

So we can infer that there is a high amount of drunk and disorderly conduct in the conscription process—further, we can infer from the videos from the borders that Russians are fleeing the draft (and for every man that flees “x” more would like to but lack the balls or resources—and feel accordingly disillusioned). Further, there have been protests against the call up. The protests are small, but they are significant in such early days. Politicians used to have a rule of thumb that every one letter from a constituent represented the views of a hundred others who couldn’t be arsed to write in; accordingly, we can say that every 100 protesters on the streets of Moscow represent 10,000 others—and remember, no conscripts have even died yet (many, many will die).

Taken together, this bodes very ill for Putin. His is assembling, in a rag-tag way, a reluctant and demoralised force. They will be sent to face an army flush with pride from its recent victories and high in morale because it has reclaimed its national heroes from Azovstal (in return, the Russians reclaimed not ordinary Ivans but some pro-Putin political flunky—demoralising, Putin looks after his stooges and not the people; Zelensky gets “our boys” back). The Russians are going to face a well organised, well equipped, and well supported Ukrainian army that is high in morale—meanwhile, the Russians are firing generals here and there and face grumbles in the rear. There is, so far, no sign that Russia has countered the Ukrainian offensive or has the resources to do so—apart from impotently punishing Ukrainian civilians through air strikes.

In Iran, one of Putin’s few international allies, the CIA has fomented a national disturbance based off a girl’s death at the hands of the religious police—and this gives encouragement to Putin’s domestic opponents (“Look who we’re allied to, Muslim savages who beat girls to death for having their hair uncovered!”). These ideas tend to spread—are intended to. At the moment, I give Putin two years in power tops. Now, he may manage to turn it around—there’s always luck—however, as stands, he is in a very weak position; and the body bags are yet to flow back home.