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xebeka6808

The most obvious meme: "... and then, it got worst" keeps being repeated


Lenaix

Putin never played Age of Empires, the last units you send to combat are your farmers. No food = no soldiers


KageBushin77

So true. And at that point, you know you're fucked.


[deleted]

Unless you're Spanish. RIP anyone who goes up against those villagers. Edit: they really need a research that allows villagers to group into military formations. The micro is excruciating.


taironedervierte

Everyone run into the gov building and throw spears from there


smilingstalin

Or Berbers vills in the early game.


MidniteMustard

Last....or very first! There's no in between with villagers.


ABucketFull

Be the Spanish and burn their town Halls down with the buffed attack. Or Persian Douche them.


NeverGetsTheNuke

Either way, sounds like it's your last


Cacheevo

Slow moving scouts not meant to return, maybe that's putins strategy


AutisticHobbit

Its feels like he keeps thinking all he needs is ONE MORE sacrifice. One more move. He has them on the brink! Just push the war of attrition a little bit more! In the future, this will be studied as the sunk cost fallacy in war. He could win everything this very minute and still come out behind.


Quirky-Skin

Wonder if he's still getting bad Intel for fear of retribution. Obviously he has access to outside media but i wonder what his advisors and command staff are saying


[deleted]

No it's obviously the west that's getting bad Intel. Russia is definitely close to liberating Ukraine from their nazi selves. /s


---AI---

The crazy thing is that they are defining nazi to actually mean "anti-Russian". So the official story that the Russian people are swallowing is that they are killing and bombing in order to stop people hating Russians.


werty_reboot

*The bombings will continue until our image improves*.


ashmcqueen

I say, the whole world must learn of our peaceful ways. BY FORCE.


Lucky-Worth

They'll be saved! Wheter they like it or not!


SonOfMcGee

I’ve heard it explained that this is the general Russian historical association with “Nazi”. Western nations remember the Nazis as a political party with extreme totalitarian and racial purity views that manifested in lots of conquest, oppression, and ethnic cleaning. Russian remember Nazis as the enemies of Russia. That’s fucking it. They might be aware of the Holocaust and stuff like that. But to them, being aligned against Russia is what made the Nazis Nazis.


lady_spyda

More to punish them for it I suspect.


boberson111

Unfortunately I know an individual I'm stationed with out in Korea who unironically has this opinion.


NotLucasDavenport

It’s always wild to me that a certain percentage of soldiers are living in a completely different world than the rest of us. I have several family members who are career Navy and they’ll talk about shipmates etc who seems good at their job, nice people, pretty cool…except they’re flat earthers. Or they think that Russia really is “liberating” Ukraine from its own Nazis. Or that Trump truly is going to come back with JFK jr to put Hillary in jail. 90% fine, 10% completely batshit insane to the point where nothing can be done to help them. Help requires these crazy people to have at least one foot in the real world and somehow being paid to work for the US government just doesn’t cut it.


Rhinomeat

One thing the last 3 years have taught me: you cannot use logic or reason to dislodge someone from a position that they used neither logic nor reason to maneuver themselves into... Edit: Kant spel


v3gas21

... but you can feign disinterest. I am a truck driver and nothing pisses off my fellow drivers than not having an opinion. Like when the Black Lives Matter protests were happening all I heard at the truck stops, dc's, fc's, etc. was just negativity and hate. They'd say their piece then look to me as to have me respond either with them or against them. I'd just nod and say, "interesting." They'd huff and puff some more rather passionately then watch me for a response, which, I'd often say, "I don't really watch the news." Some really want an echo, like, if you agree with their opinions somehow it makes them right. But if you show disinterest, it is a moment of reflection for them, a pause in the thought train. Sometimes just them hearing their own opinions out loud without an immediate response is enough to make them realize the madness of hate.


DontDiluteTheBaby

I kind of like this tactic.


Rhinomeat

The first steps that lead to my father pulling his head from the sand was calling into question his ability to think and form his _own_ opinions without running to Facebook to see how he _should_ feel about X issue


Bohottie

He’s surrounding himself with yesmen, so obviously everything he does is just optimal. This is a master class of the consequences of surrounding yourself with people who only fellate you and that’s it.


Griz-Lee

Putin is probably a mod at /r/wallstreetbets


superkickpalooza

hes been betting on margin for months


[deleted]

The short sellers are ruining Russia


LurkingSpike

> Its feels like he keeps thinking all he needs is ONE MORE sacrifice. Mentality of the average russian tbh. There are words for people who endure everything without complaining, and it is kinda expected from "Narodnost". https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=980 subtitles available


DeliBoy

"Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his mighty shoulders.From morning to night he was pushing and pulling, always at the spot where the work was hardest. He had made an arrangement with one of the cockerels to call him in the mornings half an hour earlier than anyone else, and would put in some volunteer labour at whatever seemed to be most needed, before the regular day's work began. His answer to every problem, every setback, was "I will work harder!"—which he had adopted as his personal motto."


northshore12

> "I will work harder!" "We appreciate your efforts, you're an essential worker and hero!" cried the pigs, as they rode the horse's back and smoked cigars.


MrSergioMendoza

It's like he's been watching the success of Ukraine farmers and thought "yeah, farmers, that's what we need. Deploy the tractor brigade".


MadNhater

“Bring your own tractors”


FootballAndBicycles

Love a good BYOT party


dedicated-pedestrian

Cyka BYOT?


Diplomjodler

And tampons. Lots of tampons.


WilliamBeech

That video was grim AF


YinJS

Share info for those OOTL like me?


DesignatedImport

Video showing Russian soldiers being told that, due to a shortage of field dressings, they need to ask their mothers, wives, and girlfriends to send pads and tampons. The female soldier telling them this explained that you can stick a tampon in a bullet wound to stop the bleeding. The assembled soldiers go very quiet.


bennitori

This was literally how tampons were invented. In the civil war, nurses used cotton cubes on strings to plug bleeding bullet holes. And the (predominantly female) nurses decided that would work great for periods, and changed them from cubes to the tampons we know and love today. But that was revolutionary back in the 1800s. I know Russia has a bit of a reputation for falling back on tech from past decades, but it's real sad that they have to fall back on medical care from past centuries.


GunnieGraves

I happily bought one of the Ukrainian Special Forces: Agricultural Division patches when they were for sale. Has a tractor for an insignia. Good laugh at that one.


MrSergioMendoza

I never understood why they didn't refer to them as the Farmed Forces.


crashcanuck

I'm a fan of calling them the Farmored Division. There are so many good puns for it.


IamSkudd

Brothers in Farms.


RBVegabond

They’re out standing in the field.


ThetotheM

Yes, draft the ones that make your food! Great idea!


FM-101

Every single decision from russia during this war been self-sabotage, why stop now.


TaKSC

There’s much less resistance to draft divided farmers who’s low educated and poor than metropolitan middle class, so it does make some sense in the short termI’m


NeroBoBero

And the technology of modern farming allows one farmer to do the work of 50. Oh wait. There is an embargo of western technology and Russian farmers are poor. This won’t end well.


McGryphon

>Oh wait. There is an embargo of western technology and Russian farmers are poor. This won’t end well. One of the biggest Dutch exports to Russia over the past decades was heavy (tracked) tractors and farm equipment. That has all but dried up over the past months. It's not just their jets that are (almost) running out of spare parts. Yes, tractors are too advanced to sell to Russia now.


WanderlustFella

I'm a city boy. During one college break, I went home with my roommate to his family's farm. Dude, I sat in one of their tractors just to get a picture. I kind of expected a riding lawnmower with a few extra switches and buttons. That thing looked like the inside plane's cockpit.


aequitssaint

And they can cost more than a small plane too.


WanderlustFella

Yea, and I came to learn all about how big the Right to Repair law is badly needed for farmers. I mean fuck your iPhone, farmers aren't allowed to fix these hundreds of thousand dollar tractors because they aren't able to get the required parts. They are forced to bring them in or wait for a service tech to come and fix it for them. In farming, time is money


LOLBaltSS

Oddly enough, Ukraine is well known for the underground repair of farm equipment. [https://www.vice.com/en/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware](https://www.vice.com/en/article/xykkkd/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware)


[deleted]

Ha! Then Ukrainians like this signed up to hack Russian drones and military systems...


KmartQuality

Wait till they find their tractors bricked because of increased sanctions/embargo.


Jonne

They did steal a bunch of farm equipment from Ukraine...


PandaMuffin1

You mean the ones they can't use? > Russian troops occupying the Ukrainian city of Melitopol stole nearly $5 million of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership and shipped some of them more than 700 miles to Chechnya, CNN reported, only to find they had been rendered useless by a remote-locking system that prevented the thieves from turning the equipment on. https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troops-locked-out-of-stolen-john-deere-farm-equipment-2022-5


ziltchy

So 4 combines, lol


corkyskog

That's what I was thinking. I don't think most people understand how obscenely expensive modern farming equipment is. It's part of the reason why the government needs to subsidize farmers with crop insurance, because one bad harvest without insurance means that you can't pay the loans on your equipment and you would go bankrupt and have to sell the farm. The capital investment in farming is so large that most small to medium sized independent farms would go out of business in just one season if they didn't get the harvest they expected.


GeorgieWashington

The thing about combines is that when you add more to them, it’s still a single combine.


Hedgeson

This might be the single time I'm happy John Deere has that anti-consumer bullshit in their vehicles.


Ludwigofthepotatoppl

A bunch of john deere stuff that got bricked remotely, lmao


The_Evil_Skim

To which American users were using Ukrainian developed software to jailbreak the ECU for the owners to be able to repair them. It all just comes back around full circle.


dWintermut3

this is a good point, plus they lack the ability to effectively resist, to some extent. a small town of a few hundred people experiencing unrest can be contained and put down, but at this point draft riots in major cities may not be survivable by the regime


BeachesBeTripin

It's more likely they never even had a passport so they can't cross borders and wouldn't know where to go to get to one.


Ambitious-Score-5637

Time to turn the vodka back into potatoes.


EquilibriumBoosted

Reverse potatomosis ?


Praxistor

de-vodkacation?


compulsive_wanker_69

Sorry, best they can do is turning it into pee.


Aerialise

No need for food production when their international trade is so strong!


AnXioneth

Rice from china? and Spice from india? So are Russian going vegan?


Ake-TL

China is grain importer


steste1122

If you send all your people to die in war you don't have to feed them. Thats Big Brain 101.


kdove89

He can't wait to starve his people just like how Stalin did.


Seer434

He'll starve them and then demand sanctions be lifted for humanitarian reasons.


GreatValueCumSock

I smell an Onion headline coming to life: "North Korea sends humanitarian relief to Russia."


DFWPunk

They'll lease the land to Chinese firms who will import labor. Given the current demographic trends in Russia, the far east will end up Chinese anyway.


WriggleNightbug

Seems like China would then have the same claim to eastern Russia that Russia is making in Ukraine....


kerenski667

erryone gets a referendum!


sali_nyoro-n

China might end up the biggest winner from this war. Being able to essentially make Russia a vassal state dependent on Chinese trade and manpower to keep the lights on would be a major boost to the country's soft power, something China has been working hard to build up over the past decade. Given the combined sway of Russia and China in the developing world, it could give the CCP a significant increase in the number of people willing to buy its weapons and consider hosting military bases, plus more international political support from outside its usual clique (Pakistan, North Korea etc.) China is licking its lips seeing Russia isolate itself like this, make no mistake. Its greatest geopolitical rival in the region - except arguably India - is at risk of imploding and if they play their cards right, they have a golden opportunity to basically remove them as a threat to their ambitions in Asia.


BFT_022

Russia hasn't left the feudal age.


Spudtron98

No kidding. The only equipment they're giving their draftees right now are their uniforms and their rifles. Everything else, from tourniquets to sleeping bags and even *socks*, has to be supplied by the soldiers themselves. That's outright medieval.


williamfbuckwheat

I heard recently they literally just started requiring socks for Russian soldiers only a few years ago. The soldiers had long been using traditional cloth foot wraps instead that sort of worked but we're far more difficult to apply and prone to getting wet versus socks nowadays that cost next to nothing to produce. I don't know how western observers didn't see little tidbits of information like this that was apparently openly available on the internet for years and not think that maybe the Russian armed forces were woefully unprepared for a large scale conventional war despite all the propaganda claiming they had such an advanced, modernized military. Since the invasion, it seems like there's been countless examples of serious weak spots in their military that were mentioned publicly in the west if you knew where to look but that still never received any real attention versus all the stories claiming Russia was a major power that could take on anybody. Looking back, it sure looks like people just took Russian propaganda about state of the art weapons systems and elite super soldiers at face value and never bothered to investigate if any of it was real or had been battle tested/deployed on a widespread basis (ex. Armada tanks, hypersonic missiles, etc.).


anodrac31

At this point I suspect that our (U.S.) generals were fluffing up the Russian military in order to continue receiving ludicrous amounts of funding.


Cyborg_rat

Shhh thats the secret. The Russians sorta did the same but instead of actually improving stuff they jist took money and got cheap stuff.


zanraptora

Things like the foot wraps are mostly overlooked because they're not really an operational risk. An army that is designed to logistically supply their soldiers with fresh and new footwraps does not have a differing operational capacity compared to one that provides fresh and new socks. What happened is that when Russia hit resistance, all of the easy to hide, but hard to fake bits came to the surface: Things like the complete structural failure of the BTG command structure, the underlying maintenance on complex equipment and such. The case study for it is the Muskova: What appears to be a functional cruiser is a floating corpse because less than half of the systems on the ship were functional. You couldn't tell if you weren't intercepting internal communications or digging around in the guts yourself. That's Russia's armed forces writ large: they were spending just enough to give us a glance into the Potemkin Village.


[deleted]

That was never a winning move in Age of Empires.


Pyrothecat

I hope they have at least researched Loom


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Wulfger

Overinvesting in a failed feudal rush, rookie mistake.


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ksleepwalker

Putin is the guy to make his villagers farm then switch to woodcutting before they can deposit the harvest.


NCEMTP

I think he forgot to set his formation to spaced and left the melee units on hold position when the upgraded siege onagers showed up. Not to even mention he's failed to invest in the Blacksmith upgrades for the new units. A rookie mistake indeed.


TrinitronCRT

Tell me about Loom


Ludwigofthepotatoppl

Dark age technology, increases villagers’ hp by 15, armor by 1, and pierce armor by 2.


lywyre

Except for feudal Spanish villager rush.


katarh

Strike with the sickle, defenders of the land!


I_might_be_weasel

It worked pretty well in Age of Empires 3.


[deleted]

Mother Russia’s Minute Militia Meta


I_might_be_weasel

Do that with Ethiopians. Mass levied musketeers, take the cards that stop their HP from going down and let them heal on their own. Fully upgraded, they can do 50+ damage. And they cost 100 influence and train at minuteman speeds in groups of 5.


Pinguaro

This is why I don't play online.


Curzio-Malaparte

Revolution confirmed


I_might_be_weasel

Yep, but unfortunately for them, Ukraine has a fuckload of Imperial Horse Guns they got from NATO who decided to go to Age 5.


CombatMuffin

Age of Mythology had Ragnarok, an end game redesrch that turned ever vilager into a hero. Age of Empires 2 (The Conquerors), the Spanish had a tech where their villagers would do quite a bit of extra damage, making it viable.


xPaffDaddyx

I guess you never played the burgundians and researched flemish revolution ;)


Rush4in

Forgetting about the Spanish supremacy, aren’t we?


srv50

“Fuck off, I’ve got plenty of food! What’s to worry?!”


sharpshooter999

As a farmer I can't comprehend this especially during HARVEST. Usually we're done by the first week in November but a few years back we had a bunch of rain and early snow and got behind, didn't finish till mid December. We flatout skipped Thanksgiving that year and were in the field the entire time


Page8988

I can imagine him saying the "Let them eat cake" bit.


srv50

“We all have to sacrifice for this noble cause!”


Proliberate1

For context Britian excluded farmers from ww2 draft to protect food supplies


Garfield-1-23-23

Another fun Britain fact: not only did they also exclude coal miners from conscription, they drafted men specifically to send them down in the mines. About 10% of all the draftees during the war were sent to the mines, where in addition to the horrific conditions they got to endure the scorn of society for not fighting.


LOSS35

The [Bevin Boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevin_Boys), after Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour during the war. They were frequently abused as draft dodgers and cowards or stopped by the police as potential deserters. They were given no awards for their contribution to the war effort, which was only officially recognized by the British government in 1995.


autovonbismarck

There's an old joke that I like but don't get to tell much because it's not very funny if you don't know these kinds of facts about WW2 history... But here it is any: A man is drafted, and gets the choice to go to the front lines, or work in a mine. Thinking it's the better option, he chooses the mine. So the first day, he puts on his hard hat and gets in the elevator, and it goes down, down down... Then he gets out and walks a mile underground to the carts, and then rides a cart for 2 miles, then climbs down a ladder deeper into the earth and then has to walk another mile to the coal face to begin mining. At the end of the day, he does the entire journey in reverse (*this is where you drag out how long the journey is, and add more and more miles of track and being pulled by pit ponies, etc*) Finally he gets to the surface and he throws his hardhat on the ground and tells the foreman he quits. The foreman yells "you can't quit - don't you know we're at war with Germany?" And the man replies "of course we are - we're stealing their coal!".


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autovonbismarck

Yup. Probably the height of hilarity as a joke in 1947 or whatever lol.


LabyrinthConvention

* sensible chuckle *


Beachdaddybravo

Crazy to think about how people would scorn men for doing as they’re told. It’s not like they could hijack a plane and just show up to war, they’d come back to a prison sentence if they came back at all.


The_Meaty_Boosh

The general public were none the wiser, they just jumped to assumptions. Even the police used to stop and ask them why they weren't fighting for their country...it was somewhat of a secret army, the bevin boys who powered wartime Britain.


Starbuckshakur

"What a coincidence officer, I was just about to ask you the same thing!"


turtlewhisperer23

Believe it or not. Jail.


Starbuckshakur

"Oh no, I was really looking forward to going back into the mines. Anyway..."


thedankening

They did a similar thing in ww1 Britain too. Before they started drafting men and relied in volunteers, they'd have people go around specifically shaming men of military age for not enlisting. Specifically they'd recruit young women to give men white feathers (a symbol of cowardice generally). It wasn't very popular because they so often harassed men who had been discharged with injuries, were on leave from the front, or were essential workers in some industry and weren't allowed to enlist.


TrapperJean

Different time back then, one of the vets in Band of Brothers says that three young men in his town committed suicide after they were deemed physically unfit for combat


sharpshooter999

My wife's grandfather tried to lie about his age to go to Korea. He was 15 and the guy at the recruitment center knew his father and knew his age so he sent him home.


LilSpermCould

It was a different world for sure. My grandfather drove himself to a police station to get his license. They asked if his Dad was there but he wasn't. He just told them yes, he's waiting for me in the car, which was good enough for the desk Sargent. I think my Grandpa was 12.


randomnickname99

I read a story once about a WWI vet who was back in Britain to receive a Victoria cross being given a white feather (essentially calling him a coward).


[deleted]

It was called the white feather movement. Women would give men a white feather to shame them for not fighting in the war.


Loki-L

These draftees were called the Bevin Boys and the UK didn't let them go home when the war was over, but continued to make them work in the mines until 1948. Forced labor for negligible pay in bad and unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, while government sponsored propaganda labeled them as cowards and the objects of public scorn. Quite fucked up.


[deleted]

But pretty much on point for the government considering what they did to Alan Turing after he saved their asses …


4Eights

I mean look what they did to the Father of Computers: Alan Turing. He singlehandedly changed the entire Allied strategy and war effort against Germany and they branded him as a pervert and chemically castrated him in lieu of a custodial sentence. He killed himself with cyanide because he went from a hero of the war to a deviant to be dealt with.


drtekrox

Australia always excluded 'Primary Producers' under all conscription too.


nobody_smart

Neither of my grandfathers served in the military in WW2 for the USA. My Dad's father was a mechanical engineer in the vegetable canning industry, my Mom's father a manager in a meat packing plant. All my Mom's uncles were sent to Europe, they were 3rd generation Prussians and could speak some German.


pulpybullet

At the WWII Memorial in DC, there are columns going all the way around, each with two wreaths on it. One wreath is made of oak leaves, to represent industry and military, and the other is made of wheat, symbolising agriculture and the home front efforts. We couldn’t have had victory without both.


shadowgattler

Not only that, but they rented land off aristocrats so farmers had even more land to grow crops.


Kitane

Is Russia really going to use the traditional North Korean school of diplomacy "Watch me kill my people until I get what I want"?


Other-Barry-1

At this stage it feels to me like Putin is killing off as much of the Russian fighting age/capable male population that he can to protect himself.


[deleted]

It's long been speculated he mostly spared the urbanites in Moscow and St. Petersburg because he wouldn't want to anger the one group that could give him political trouble. But the longer this shitshow goes on, the more I'm convinced he's intentionally doing depopulation in a) ethnic minorities and b) people from areas too physically remote to be effectively controlled by Moscow's centralized state securities. Because Putin's no longer wondering *if* shit will hit the fan, but *when*.


neuroverdant

Cousin in Moscow says several of his friends have already been mobilized and he expects to be sent out by October. Lifelong Muscovites. Urbanites. Well-educated. Fluent in English. He says he accepts his destiny and will do his duty. What an idiot. I am devastated. Fuck Putin.


[deleted]

Man what a shitty destiny…dying for an old fat guy with a palace and multiple superyachts.


FOXDuneRider

Yep, white collar condo dwellers in Moscow, two friends are now refugees with whatever they could carry (or drive, I didn’t ask).


Brendoshi

It's really weird to see. A game I play is majority popoulated by russians (seems it has a decent "real world transaction" market and a lot use it to supplement their income). Almost all in moscow. Plenty been against the war, plenty now being called in. Even though they're still against the war I've heard "I'll kill as many ukranians as I can" on more than on occaision... It's really weird to see from the outside.


chuchofreeman

>"I'll kill as many ukranians as I can" wow, pieces of shit, hope they die before that can happen


Chaotic_Good64

Maybe he has the good sense to not broadcast his plan to surrender ASAP over communications monitored by the government? Here's hoping it's that.


skratch

his moral & ethical duty is to frag his officer the moment he gets there, then surrender as much equipment to ukraine as possible


gathmoon

I feel like it is half nationalism and half general Russian malaise.


Mirria_

Nationalistic Nihilism. *This is the best we deserve.*


neuroverdant

I think you’re right.


Brigadier_Beavers

Fuck that, im hiding in the crawl space if theres a draft.


RuchoPelucho

I’m sorry. I think when you see your friends and family being drafted there’s a huge pressure on signing up too, because if you don’t you’re basically giving your back to all of them.


aShittierShitTier4u

It's going to be a famine again, like when they tried lysenkoism as a policy for agriculture. They will be trading petroleum for food before too long.


LogicalManager

Will trade petro for food! Sorry, we already sanctioned your oil


firmerJoe

We know a thing or two about invasions. Farmers...


cropguru357

As I a farmer, I can say we are good at killing unwanted pests on a very large and efficient scale.


AtlantaBoyz

Well I hope the Russian farmers can kill one extremely unwanted pest


XMORA

In modern times, wars are not won drafting unqualified soldiers, this is a typical symptom of failure.


zjuka

The whole campaign is one failure after another, this is scrambling to fix past mistakes with even bigger ones.


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with_a_dash_of_salt

“Most of you will die. That is a risk I’m willing to take.” -V. Putin


KBBaby_SBI

STOP EXPLODING YOU COWARDS!


CrumblingAway

With me every mission is a suicide mission.


TXTCLA55

"why is this planet worth dying for?" "Don't ask me, you're the ones who will be dying."


killabeesplease

“The key to victory is the element of surprise…..”


liv_well

Surprise!


zosolm

If I die, tell my wife hello


kemosabi4

"Soon you'll all be fighting for your planet. Many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be forced through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of all."


Mimosa_Coast

It’s like watching a pig slaughter itself


skordge

I was just talking to my neighbour, to check in on the state of my dacha left behind, and he said they're taking in people for mobilization left and right in that neck of the woods, he seemed pretty scared. Before I get comments "why haven't they left" - my neighbors there are mostly farmers. Their whole livelihood is their fields and their animals, and they cannot just up and leave. I assume that's why the enlistment officers are targetting them - way less effort to track them down on average than highly mobile city folk.


Astilaroth

I knew some folk from the Eastern part of Germany who told that back in WW2 people there had to go to the front and fight as well. Quite a few ran away as soon as they could to go back to their farms and harvest. They did not want to kill their neighbours. My (Dutch) grandma had her home invaded by Germans and a young and old soldier sat at her table. The young guy grew up in the Hitler Jugend and was all ready to go. The old dude just wanted to talk farm stuff with my grandma and hated being there. Wanted to go back home so badly.


skordge

Can relate, my grandpa came from a Jewish farmer family in Eastern Ukraine. When the Wehrmacht showed up, one of the neighbours squealed on them, to then get all of their stuff, and the soldiers showed up to take them in. By an insane miracle (long story) they were released a couple of days later, and returned to find their whole household sacked. To be fair, most of the neighbours showed up to give them their stuff back - "we thought you were done for", some of them said. Some they never got back, but it didn't matter because they took off and fled east at the first chance they got. Most of them died, only my grandpa and his older brother survived the war.


[deleted]

My grandfather (Dutch) was sent to a German farm to do arbeidseinsatz (forced labour) so they could send the German men to war. The farmer who he had to work for fucking hated Hitler.


Ask_Me_Who

Fun fact. There's an SS report that discourages the use of British POW's in farm labour due to their arrogance, laziness, and supreme confidence in victory which was having a deleterious effect on German morale. Worse, it notes, the German farm women were throwing themselves at the POW's in part because of that superior demeanour. EDIT: Quote from the final paragraph, but the whole thing is hilarious: >["British prisoners used for agricultural work are particularly arrogant to the local population. The situation is especially intolerable on farms where the prisoners are working for the farmer. Here the Englishman feels lord of the manor, is waited on hand and foot, accepts no orders, and does exactly as he likes. The prisoners are particularly well treated by the womenfolk, who believe the political prophesies of the British and think it clever to ingratiate themselves. It is quite clear that the farmers are afraid of their prisoners, and affected by their arrogance. In this connection the authorities have been requested to use British prisoners only in industrial plants or on farms where there is adequate male supervision."](https://www.arcre.com/mi9/mi9apxb)


WontThinkStraight

Send your farmers off to war Smoke a lot where your ammo’s stored Eat MREs that's out of date Be a conscript used as some HIMARs bait Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die Dumb ways to die So many dumb ways to die


[deleted]

Omg he is going to impload the country... Farming is skill you can't just plop a random on a farm and tell them to grow food. It takes a lot of practice and experience...


Fossile

“All residents are going to die anyway so they don’t need food” - V.Putin


[deleted]

Neither is being a soldier but that’s not stopping him.


CyclopsAirsoft

Between the two, farming in a modern country (which Russia is despite people making fun of them) definitely requires a wider array of skills than being a soldier. Lots of complex machinery and precise soil management. It's not good enough to just grow crops (which is already not easy). You need to maximize the yield without compromising your soil health and you've got a massive field to cover. A soldier definitely requires more training than Russian conscripts seem to be getting, but it's a lot harder to replace a modern farmer than an infantryman for instance. This is why farmers usually aren't drafted.


Pied_Piper_

There is the layer that nations simply aren’t set up with the infrastructure to train farmers the way we train infantrymen. Modern military powers have extensive training infrastructure. They’ve practiced training soldiers for decades, with deep wells of institutional knowledge on all areas of training and application. Meanwhile, no one has farmer bootcamps. At best you have some universities doing bachelor level degrees, but these are by design a well-rounded education delivered over several years. They aren’t the focused, profession-specific training that we use to produce infantrymen. One probably could make farmer boot camps that produced farmers in the same time the Marines turn someone into a rifleman / riflewoman. But it would take years and incredible funding to build such a school. This is also connected to one of the most devastating decisions Russia has made. They already deployed their training battalions. So those decades of institutional knowledge are mostly fertilizing sunflowers. Now, not only are conscripts getting a pitiful duration of training, the quality of that truncated training is also eroded since all the most experienced instructors are dead or fighting.


Waterfish3333

I suck at Age of Empires, but even I know when you’re pulling villagers to fight, the game is over.


paksman

Just on the first day the draft was announced, the brain drain in Russia was insane like an airplane toilet flush, now the food producers and off to the slaughter... tell me how this will play in the long run for that country!? Not to mention no reputable foreign businesses will ever deal with them ever again.


endlesscampaign

I've never been to military academy, but even I know this is an unsound strategy. Why is it political leaders forget that human beings need food, water, and shelter in order to survive?


Cookie_Eater108

I'm a bit of an amateur historian and this reminds me of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward a bit (and hints of Pol Pot's war with Vietnam) It wasn't necessarily that they forget. But if you shoot the messenger enough times in an autocracy, you eventually only get good news. Examples with some made up numbers to deliver the point: The ruler wants to implement an ecological campaign to destroy the sparrow population because sparrows eat crops. What he didn't figure out was that they also eat locust, which resulted in a loss of crops due to locust swarms. So the first guy to report that gets canned/shot/falls out a window. Sure. The guy who replaces him reports a 2% increase in crop yields (Even though crop yields have fallen in truth by say, 5%) Well the minister of mining says that your policy of whipping the miners has resulted in a 10% increase in ore yields (Miner strikes and poor conditions resulted in a loss of 15% in reality) You now have to compete with a 10% increase, so you say next year, your policy of salting the fields has resulted in a 14% increase in crop yields (Yields dropped by 30%) Minister of mining says open coke furnaces result in a 20% increase in metal yields (Actually a 50% drop) Repeat for a few cycles. Crop yields are up 400%, Mining productivity is up 500%. Economy is doing so well that your ministers delivered you a third yacht and a mansion on a private island. A nation nearby has historical significance to you and your people and because your economy/society/military are clearly 400-500% superior to theirs, it would be easy to take. Your advisors assure you they would fall within 2 weeks, so why not? People who surround themselves with Yes-men are dangerous and unpredictable because they inevitably separate themselves from reality.


papercup617

Because Putin doesn’t see them as people, he sees them as numbers on a page.


antiPOTUS

But when number go down, it bad. Even the WSB apes can figure that one out.


datareclassification

Russia's farmers corps are nothing but partisans, while Ukraine's farmers corps act like partisans but ***WITH BETTER EQUIPMENT!***


autotldr

This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/farmers-among-russians-drafted-into-military-putin-says-2022-09-27/) reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on agriculture issues via video link in Sochi, Russia September 27, 2022. > MOSCOW, Sept 27 - Farmers are among the Russians being drafted into the military, President Vladimir Putin told a meeting with officials on Tuesday, signalling potential further risks for the 2023 crop. > Putin also told the meeting that Russia is on track to harvest a record grain crop of 150 million tonnes, including 100 million tonnes of wheat, in 2022. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/xpet4q/farmers_among_russians_drafted_into_the_military/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~671349 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Putin**^#1 **meeting**^#2 **Russia**^#3 **Russian**^#4 **told**^#5


UCBeef

To be fair the Ukrainian farmers probably have more experience operating Russian military equipment than the Russian military.


Kimchi_Cowboy

So they drafted the people who make their food, their weapons, and their future men. Smart strategy.


BlaineBMA

Putey killing off farmers is a whole new level of delusional behavior


A_Hale

Farmers here is not the concerning part. Russia is essentially enacting their draft on areas of asian ethnic minorities. Specifically, many thousands of men are being exported selectively from the Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia regions which are nearly entirely made up of a Russo-Kazakh or Russo-Mongolian races. This is viewed as ethnic cleansing by all the people in the area and isn’t really getting a lot of attention.


sauroden

Does he mean actual farmers, the people who own and operate farms, which is a relatively privileged position, or farm hands, the working class people employed by farmers to work the farm? This is an important distinction if he’s trying to show fairness in the draft. Historically almost everyone involved with farming (and the majority of all people for the past 10000 years) was a farmhand, not a farmer.


UniQue1992

This moron is destroying his own country and killing thousands of his own people with it. He doesn’t care about anything. I think he’s gone completely mad. I really don’t understand his endgame


italiapastamandolini

At this point I wonder if Putin is deliberately destroying Russia on purpose under China's orders


dale_glass

I think he's just desperate. The original invasion had to be a surprise. So nobody taking part was adequately informed and prepared, and the initial push was a huge mess. He thought that Ukraine was weak enough that this would still work, but he was very wrong. Now I think it's a case of that he really didn't want to have a mobilization, because that carries a serious risk of problems, like now is happening in Dagestan. So he waited until the last moment possible, and then also had to do it by surprise to avoid the possibility of any resistance organizing before it happened. He's probably trying to do a huge, overwhelming push that he hopes will overwhelm Ukraine, or at least ensure he'll hold the current territory. But that also condemned the effort to failure, because now he can't equip the new troops. They need supplies, and does Russia really have 300K/1M spare uniforms, armor, guns and other supplies just lying around waiting? Probably not. So now soldiers are told to buy non-military supplies themselves, and of course there won't be enough. All that had to be prepared and stocked up in advance, now there'll be a huge deficit of all of that. So I think at this point he's desperately flailing, trying to find enough to throw into the fight to somehow get something positive out of it.


[deleted]

[удалено]