Struggling in Ukraine, Russia paves way to sign up over-40s for army

[groundloop]

Source: Reuters

In a sign of Russia's urgent need to bolster its war effort in Ukraine, parliament said on Friday it would consider a bill to allow Russians over 40 and foreigners over 30 to sign up for the military.

[snip]

Currently, only Russians aged 18-40 and foreigners aged 18-30 can enter into a first contract with the military.

Russia has suffered huge setbacks and heavy losses of men and equipment in the 86-day-old war, in which Ukraine has mobilised practically its entire adult male population. Despite taking full control of the ruins of Mariupol, Moscow remains far from its objective of seizing all of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. read more

"Clearly, the Russians are in trouble. This is the latest attempt to address manpower shortages without alarming their own population. But it is growing increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to disguise their failures in Ukraine," said retired U.S. General Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-parliament-consider-allowing-over-40s-sign-up-military-2022-05-20/

---

Why the hell doesn't Putin just declare victory and leave?

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Do you win a war when you destroyed your own society as well as the victim's country?

[Grokenstein]

2. Everyone's already seen your failure, Moscow. Pack it in.

Russia's going to being paying for Kremlin idiocy for decades to come. Face reality and start repairing the damage.

[Turbineguy]

3. Anybody over 40 who would sign up

would be a stone fucking alcoholic.

[speak easy]

6. 'stone fucking alcoholic' - there are plenty of those in Russia.

[Bo Zarts]

28. They conscripted drunks out of bars in Idaho to fight the Great Fire of 1910 (3 million acres).

Hell of a way to sober up .. on a fire or in a war.

[Warpy]

4. Looks like the younger pool of conscripts got ther "greetings" letters and went to ground

They can rush a young raw recruit into the front in a couple of months. He's likely to be killed sooner rather than later, but he's reinforcement while he lasts.

Older guys are going to need more training to be able to get to the front. My guess is that theones with families are going to find their patriotic bravado wearing thin and they'll join the young in hiding.

Putin is a cornered rat who is not going to give up, he'll bare his teeth and go on the attack. Eventually the other muckety mucks in the Kremlin are going to realize their own survival relies on getting him out of office in a very public manner and they will.

[Lonestarblue]

8. If the reports of Putin's cancer are true, he may feel he has nothing to lose.

He has never cared how many people are killed with his attacks. He has had any number of his enemies murdered over the years. I think the West has learned its lesson about appeasing a bully, and the economic sanctions are not likely to end until Putin is dead or out of power. If he is truly dying, he won’t care how many Russian soldiers or Ukrainians die. Who knows whether he is truly ill. I just want sanctions to bite hard enough to deny him the money nd equipment to continue fighting.

If no way is found soon around the blockade of the Black Sea ports to allow Ukrainian foods to be shipped, the West should send in a load of tractor trailers and gaul the grains through Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and northern Greece to The Aegean, assuming the shipments are already in or near Odessa. While that takes a lot longer, it sends the message that there are ways to stymy Russia’s blockade. I still hope the UN can declare a humanitarian crisis of starvation and demand safe passage for Ukrainian ships with NATO escorts.

[erronis]

11. "I think the West has learned its lesson about appeasing a bully" - paraphrasing Susan Collins

I'm not picking on you or your post. My view is that rational people learn from their mistakes.

Collins and many others say those words but don't ever learn.

[Warpy]

16. The problem with that is that the people around him will also have nothing to lose

since he's going to drag the lot of them down with him and they might accelerate his cancer with some lead poisoning.

It's happened before. Autocratic governments are very brittle and can snap suddenly, although nobody knows the real storty until years later, long after the publicly orchestrated grief dies down.

[ananda]

5. It's really over for Russia.

Ukraine is too tough and is getting lots of help.

[Demovictory9]

10. I hope so

[AntiFascist]

7. Just more canon fodder for Putin n/t

[erronis]

12. Need to get rid of those old people anyway.

[EndlessWire]

24. LOL!

Forty isn't old, honey! Anyway, remember that 70 something Ukrainian gentleman who wanted to join the Army, and Ukraine said, no? He's the one who then went and threw the molotov cocktail at some depot or something, and he destroyed the target. Not too old for that!

[erronis]

25. Oh, to be 40 again (in my 4th quarter century)

Kudos to that UKR gentleman who still has a good throwing arm!

[Javaman]

9. they better start issuing vodka rations again. nt

[erronis]

13. I thought it was required to drink to operate a tank, missile launcher.

From a few dispatches most of those poor young men were drugged to almost incoherence and then sent off on a kamikaze mission.

[SWBTATTReg]

14. Some may not realize that the Russia we all know is truly smaller than expected. It's economy is

only 5% (some DUers have said that the %5 number I quoted is too high, that perhaps 3% would be a better number), and the number of people populating Russia only number roughly 148 million, give or take. The U.S. is currently at I think 330 million?

Now of course this isn't using Ukraine against Russia comparisons, but it goes to show that the Russian Bear isn't all that bad as some as thought, as Ukraine is aptly showing the world. Sure, Russian aggression in Ukraine has faltered, but even worse, the reputation of the Russian Bear has been immensely damaged. Sure Putin threatened the possible use of nuclear weapons, but I daresay (just an intelligent guess) that those in the know in Russia (the damage that using nuclear arms) is worse that Putin even thinks that the damage could be. We've seen a few of the more courageous Russia leaders speak out about this, as well as the invasion itself. Putin isn't the all powerful leader he and the world thought he was.

[calimary]

31. Frankly, I'm beginning to question the status of all those Russian nukes.

Considering how the previously much-vaunted and feared Russian military is performing so poorly, I’m beginning to wonder if those nukes have been properly supervised and maintained. And what about the infrastructure, human and mechanical, that would be required for maximum upkeep?

Granted, I am NO expert on this stuff. But I can’t help having noticed that the forces haven’t performed up to expectations, and the equipment seems to wind up being somewhat useless and faltering. They do NOT seem to be getting any bang for their bucks, and the general takeaway that gnaws at all this suggests that the Russian military isn’t anywhere near what we all feared it was.

[SWBTATTReg]

34. I agree w/ you. They even had detected some sort of radioactive leaks somewhere in the Country

(Detected in Moscow from what I heard), so it does jive w/ you're saying, that their nuclear weapons aren't being maintained as well as formerly expected, and that quite a few of these weapons aren't up to snuff either. In any event, I'd prefer to not find out whose weapons are better maintained, but I'll take our side by far, in any event, being that maintenance seems to be far better of our arms, our army, navy, everything, and things have a far better chance of working, then their side, where it seems corruption has been far more prevalent there then here.

[GenThePerservering]

37. Russia has not updated a lot of its equipment

nor its tactics. They have an old-school top-heavy command structure which has basically driven them into the mud. Meanwhile, Ukraine is fast, agile, desperate and using guerilla warfare as well as traditional offense and defense strategies. Not only have the men of the country mobilized, but the women as well have joined the fight, and those who can't fight are working hard in every aspect to support the effort, or to help get the vulnerable to refuge. Even elder grandmothers are making Molotov cocktails. Everyone is pitching in.

A good comparison of some of the Ukrainian tactics is Gen. Francis Marion "The Swamp Fox" in the Revolutionary War - he and his band of colonists made strike raids on the British supply lines, disrupted their routes and practically stole the food out of their mouths. They knew the area and were so fast that the just vanished into the swamps when the Brits tried to go after them. They caused more damage than an organised army many times their size. One of the worst effects was the enemy being demoralised by this constant attrition.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

15. re: "Why the hell doesn't Putin just declare victory and leave?"

Please understand that I'm just spitballing here but, maybe he doesn't want victory. Or maybe that isn't main goal.

Go into small country with theoretically overwhelming numbers and weapons and start a shooting war (sorry, special military operation ) and maybe you can win and declare victory. Maybe he just wants an enemy.

IMO, nothing unites people better than common enemy. (GW Bush 2001, October. We all still hate the Taliban. )

IDK, putin seems to have got most of the world mad at him and thinking he's an enemy. There's this quote from an old movie about Native Americans: "Amongst (disparaging term)... a tribe's greatness is figured on how mighty its enemies be."


I say the allegiance of the Russian people is important. That's why he went for 40 year olds rather than the 14 year olds.

[keithbvadu2]

17. McNamara... Viet Nam low IQ troops drafted

Viet Nam low IQ troops drafted

McNamara desperately needed warm bodies (literally) so he lowered the entrance requirements for the military.

Even some who barely knew left from right.

McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War

Hamilton Gregory Published on Apr 29, 2016

A presentation and reading by Hamilton Gregory, author of "McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam." Because so many college students were avoiding military service during the Vietnam War, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara lowered mental standards to induct 354,000 low-IQ men. Their death toll in combat was appalling.

----------------------------------------------------

All veterans are 'suckers and losers' acc to Trump.

.

[sarge43]

21. Project 100,000

It wasn't just the men lost to combat; the ones assigned to stateside support fields also had their lives trashed. From inability to cope with minimum requirements and scoring an 'inadaptability' discharge to being harassed for who they were.

Mac the Knife tried to run the service like a business. One of the principle reasons the Vietnam War was a Mongolian cluster fuck. It took years to recover from the effects.

This ole sarge would like to dance on his grave.

[calimary]

32. Ahhh, that old "run it like a business" shtick.

How many times have we heard that assertion, and watched it fail - sometimes rather spectacularly?

[sarge43]

35. It definitely fell on its ass during Nam

My favorite 'this is bull shit' which remains ever green in memory was Management by Objective. We were to make charts, graphs, spread sheets or something how we met our objectives. At that time I was in the Personnel Management field running an Discharge/Reenlistment section. I added to my fine collection of First Edition Ass Slings by my pointing out I was hardly in the position of deciding who wore the Blue and who didn't. So what was my objectives and how do I chart them? I was told to make up something and don't bring it up again.

Good times.

[packman]

23. Hence, the movie Forrest Gump

[whistler162]

18. 69 year old at the Kremlin

should lead by example.

[littlemissmartypants]

19. Their economic situations may change to the point that they may need that second job.

Putin couldn't care less. ❤

[Aussie105]

20. Shades of Germany in WW2!

First fill the army with able bodied men, then the older blokes and finally, children?

Clearly, the Russians are in trouble.

I assumed Russia was initially holding back it's best troops and weaponry for later, but that might not be so.

One Ukrainian foot soldier with a shoulder mounted or remotely launched missile takes out a Russian tank, and how many Russian soldiers die?

No way to fight a war, unless Russia meant to get bogged down and lose all along.

Nobody wins in a war. Neither side, nor civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[Roy Rolling]

22. Push Putin Out--my plan

[pandr32]

26. How about Steven Seagal?

Last edited Mon May 23, 2022, 01:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Send him.

[calimary]

33. LOL!!!

He always talked a good game, and never provided proof.

Shit - I remember Steven Seagal in interview junkets promoting whatever movie of his that was being released. He really danced around attempts to get specifics out of him. And these were some of the best interviewers in the business. He used his bravado to keep himself cloaked in an air of mystery. It always gave me a sense that something didn’t smell right.

And it always bothered me that all of a sudden, this guy comes outta nowhere and all of a sudden he’s starring in big action films. I always wondered “where did they get him? And how is he all of a sudden this big-ass big-budget action star? Where’d he come from? And how is it that I never heard of the guy, even after spending most of my career covering the entertainment beat?” Never did get any answers.

[pandr32]

36. All true!

He was also accused of domestic violence by Kelly LeBrock and allegations of multiple sexual assaults from other women. He could no longer stand the heat here in the U.S. and fled to Russia where he loves to pretend he is a big deal with his vampire toupee. What exactly does he do for his keep there?

[calimary]

38. I remember reading that he broke into Hollywood by being

the private karate instructor for some big-ass agent or studio head. I don’t remember who that was but I do recall being impressed with whoever it was (back when I covered Hollywood for a living). Somebody on the Michael Eisner or Michael Ovitz level or similar. The guy evidently thought Seagal had what it took to become a big star, and got that ball rolling for him. Damn! Why can’t I think of who it was? A serious showbiz biggie who could put you on the A-list with a single phone call.

Shit! It WAS Michael Ovitz! Just looked it up.

https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000219/bio

Just goes to show ya, it’s who you know.

[pandr32]

40. Thanks for this!

Interesting.

[Captain Zero]

27. " foreigners over 30 " Here's the big chance for the GQP Brigade !

Go for it you fucking Putin Lovers.
It's your big chance.
It's an opportunity to live your 'Beliefs'.

But we know you really are a bunch of chicken shits and won't go.

[Mozeltov Cocktail]

29. Rand Paul is 59...just saying...

Of course, his next door neighbor would be waiting for him in Ukraine

[tclambert]

30. He's a valuable soldier for Putin right where he is.

[Emile]

39. Looking for a violent uprising in defiance.