BBC made an investigation on how russian meat attacks works
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-64915654
So russians created 1st and 2nd army corps (in 2015), which where supposed to be formations for Donbas "separatists" but it didn't work out. This corps are under russian army command but they are not officially part of russian army, kind of gray zone. So russian generals sends russian mobiks to this corps, where corps commanders could use this mobiks in any way they want, there is no responsibility at all

What is really strange, is that this schema is being used for almost half a year, and every time a group of mobiks finds themselves in meat grinder, they record a video, addressing authorities and asking what is happening as they were promised to guard some warehouse in Siberia and why are they getting slaughtered. New videos with complaining mobiks pops up every week, and every time they look surprised. Do russians communicate between themselves? How this works))

@don

They might be told that those video's are all Ukrainian/Western propaganda. And never learned that thinking for yourself has advantages.

@useless_idiot but how about horizontal connections, words of mouth radio. mobics have relatives, friends, alumni. such information should be spread like a wildfire

@don

In ten years in will be once again:

"Oi, Oi, we poor Ruskis, always suffering so much! What are those Ukrainians, Georgians, and Chechnyans looking at us for? We suffered under Putin as well!"

@useless_idiot good russians?))
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_German

Still, it do not answer the question. Mobiks obviously are not enthusiastic to die, but they do not share between themselves information on where death is waiting for them. Or maybe they do share, but till last moment they cope it will be the other mobik, and surprise is kind of acting to not get arrested for discrediting the army. If the second explanation, then russia has really a huge amount of good actors ))

@don

Yeah, I really don't know. Maybe they just believe the tv more?

@don

Or they really don’t have anyone to tell it to. Small families for a long time, not a culture of sharing problems, fear of snitches, no communities, worse isolation since covid…

@don

I am assuming from your earlier posts that you are not from Russia, but had at least a bit of interactions with Russians, same as me.

Now those Russians would be the ones that are inclined to interact with foreigners, so a bit optimistic, outgoing, gregarious, and curious.

But maybe the moral of the Russian population in general is in a much worse state than the ones we met. Lost of them might just not care what happens to them?

@useless_idiot I interacted with liberal russians, the optimistic ones (before invasion) but never did it with so called "deep russians" https://neolurk.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BB%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4 so I could just assume.
It's possible to observe deep russians in social media, but they always follow "dew of the god operation" ( https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%85%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%8C_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D1%8E%D0%B9_%D0%B2_%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0_%E2%80%94_%D0%B8_%D1%82%D0%BE_%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B6%D1%8C%D1%8F_%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B0 ) behavior, means they always follow main empire narratives in public. Every deep russian knows that it was russian army invaded Donbas in 2014, but they will always deny it in public

@useless_idiot recently, I watched interview with russian libertarian (as much as russian could be a libertarian) and entrepreneur Potapenko ( https://www.youtube.com/@PotapenkoTV ) and he was describing how russian economy is doing. He was saying that russian business survived the first year of sanctions kind of well, because previously it was stressed a lot ( collapse of USSR, 1998 collapse, 2008 crisis, 2014 (sanction for Crimea) and kind of learned to survive, was prepared

@useless_idiot He also said that russian business burned all their reserves to survive first year and is doomed, but it's not the point)
The point is that deep russians also lived through all of this, and it was much much worse, they were nearly starving at the end of soviet empire. So they kind of prepared. russia has 30% prices rise, and they are aware about meat grinder, but I think for depressed alcoholic, whose only light in his life is imperial glory it's not a big deal. yet