Of course, Putin will try to protect the oligarchs and those closest to the Kremlin. That’s how authoritarian systems work. But they’re not the only ones with something to lose. The urban middle class has money, influence, and, most importantly, access to the wider world.
By Hamish De Bretton GORDON
If, as is widely expected, Vladimir Putin orders a general mobilization after Russia’s fraudulent September elections, he may find that he is not simply gathering 300 more men to send to his failing war in Ukraine. He may be mobilizing the very people who will, in the end, end it.
Could this be Putin’s “Boys in Zinc” moment? The phrase has a dark resonance in Russia. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, dead Russian soldiers, mostly young recruits, were sent home in zinc coffins. The mothers of Russian soldiers marched to the Kremlin demanding that their sons be returned home. After some 18 Soviet troops had been killed, the political pressure became impossible to ignore. The Red Army finally withdrew in 1989. That same year, a book titled Boys in Zinc (sometimes translated as Zinky Boys), by the writer Svetlana Alexievich, was published, documenting the war and its aftermath. It sparked a huge domestic debate. The zinc coffins returning from Afghanistan, and the grief and anger that came with them, were a significant factor not only in the end of the war but also in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Why then, after what Ukraine claims are 1.5 million Russian casualties, has there been relatively little public outcry this time?
The answer may lie in who is dying. Putin, for most of this war, has been able to avoid sending ethnic Russian conscripts into the fight against their will. The Russian army has been filled with prisoners, mercenaries, members of ethnic minorities, and men from poorer Regions, drawn by salaries that are outrageously high by Russian standards or by the promise of release from prison. To the elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg, these men are, to put it bluntly, worthless. Their sons are not sent to Ukraine unless they choose to volunteer, and even then they are likely to be assigned to secure posts. The propaganda machine reinforces the illusion. At home, the Russian soldier is presented as a heroic “internationalist warrior” who liberates Ukraine and supposedly secures a brighter future for the people. It is a grotesque inversion of reality. At the front, there are few heroic things in what is experienced.
Hunger, cold, fear, and the constant possibility of death are daily realities. Soldiers are often poorly equipped and inadequately supplied. Corruption is rampant. Discipline and punishment are deadly and unfair. Alcohol and drugs become tools to cope with the unbearable. Some go so far as to deliberately mutilate themselves just to escape the battlefield. This is not an army marching steadily to victory. It is a shredder consuming young men on an industrial scale. But the general mobilization of 300 or more men could dramatically change the political equation. For the first time, war could begin to penetrate deep into the comfortable homes of western Russia’s middle class. Suddenly, it might not be the son of some Chechen or Tatar mother—or a criminal released from prison, or a foreign mercenary—who is sent to die in the Donbas. It could be their sons.
Of course, Putin will try to protect the oligarchs and those closest to the Kremlin. That’s how authoritarian systems work. But they are not the only ones with something to lose. The urban middle class has money, influence and, most importantly, access to the wider world. They know that Russia’s economy is suffering, that their country has become unpopular in much of the West and that their sons can now soon be expected to die in a war whose objectives are becoming less credible by the day. This is where the real danger for Putin lies. And even if he manages to put another 300 men in uniform, numbers alone will not win this war. The army needs well-trained soldiers, competent officers, modern equipment and time to prepare. Russia has already emptied a large part of its training structure to fill the front. The experienced instructors themselves have been consumed by the war. The recruits reportedly received only rudimentary training before being thrown into the fray. Putin therefore faces a stark choice: continue to feed the grinding machine or admit that his “special military operation” has failed. His increasingly harsh rhetoric toward Britain and other European backers of Ukraine suggests a Kremlin increasingly frustrated with the situation on the battlefield and desperate to break the West’s resolve. Putin seems to believe that, if he can simply outlast Ukraine and its allies, victory will somehow emerge from exhaustion.
We must not allow it. Britain, France and our European allies must ignore the threatening rhetoric and focus on the only thing that matters: keeping Ukraine armed, supplied and capable of fighting. Putin’s threats are intended to scare us into doing just the opposite. The irony is that the coming Russian mobilization may ultimately weaken Putin rather than strengthen him. The “young boys in zinc” will not necessarily come from the poorest corners of Russia or from prison cells. They may come from the very families that have so far been shielded from the consequences of Putin’s folly. The women of Moscow finally forced the Kremlin to bring their sons home. Putin may be creating a new generation of Russian mothers with the same determination. And, if Ukraine continues to resist the front, the greatest legacy of this disastrous war may be that Russia emerges from it so militarily weakened that, for many years to come, it simply does not have the conventional forces to threaten the rest of Europe.
Who will come after Putin, no one can know. It could be better. It could be much worse. But one thing is certain: 300 more Russians thrown into the shredder will not undo Putin’s strategic disaster. It may simply bring the consequences of his war to the doorsteps of people who have so far been spared.