Vladimir Putin cannot be enjoying the run of bad press that he’s getting, but then again, we’ve heard that he at least pretends not to indulge in anything but Russian State TV while being “pathologically afraid for his life.” Still, he must have heard that Volodymyr Zelensky wants to make him pee in a bucket for the duration of his life, so in addition to his imperialistic dreams, Putin really has a reason to win his disastrous war. This is despite enormous battlefield losses and Putin feeling the need to fire a high commander in an effort to turn this joint around.
Newsweek now reports word that the Putin regime’s recruitment strategy is taking a turn, several months after his sizable drafts began. In addition to calling up reserve troops and recruiting civilians, the Russian army has also heavily been drawing from prisons, where felons are essentially tossing a coin while hoping to survive the battlefield. As Newsweek points out, Olga Romanova (a prison rights advocate) is passing on word that prisoner contracts are now three times longer than their previous duration:
“New about the recruitment of prisoners. Since February, this has been done mainly by the Ministry of Defense. They report from two regions, Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl: they began to sign contracts with prisoners not for 6 months, as it was before, but for 18. That is, they expect to fight next year as well,” [Romanova] wrote on Telegram.
This says a lot about the shortage of available troops along with Putin seeing the light on how long this war might last. It also doesn’t help that an ex-commander has been out there forecasting Russian “defeat” amid news of Putin’s pickle-stocked compound, where he apparently has been ignoring reality, but clearly, he can’t do that forever.
(Via Newsweek)