This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

This is a bizarre fact. A fact as far as I know. A reported fact from the lips of a Russian POW. The average age of the soldiers in his unit is 50. With some soldiers as old as 60. The soldier in question looked to be around 50 himself. I’ve never heard tell of anyone ever winning a war anywhere with fifty-year-old soldiers. But this poor shlub was from nowhere stan, you’ve ever heard of and he was made promises.

“You’ll be a security guard. Yeah, or a truck driver! Maybe even the army Librarian and play in the army band!” But the story always ends the same way. They load em up in truck and drop off somewhere in the woods near the front lines after dark. “Stay here and guard this spot with your lives! If you run, we will kill you.” Guard from who? From where? With what? “You’ll find out! Gotta go. Here’s two days’ rations, we’ll be back in a week.”

Soldiers from poverty Africa promised $2,000 per month. If they can survive for a year, they can go home and live as a king. But untrained soldiers, just dumped on the side of the road and that’s going to be a mighty big if. You might even be a Russian Rambo. But if you’re dropped in the dark in the middle of a group of untrained idiots with loaded guns, you are in trouble.

The Russian army appears to be a structure crumbling. Everyone is a rifleman today! I read of one group of drone operators. Who are a rare and a much-needed technical skill. Dumped on the side of the road in the middle of the night and dead by dawn. Just pointlessly squandered to man a checkpoint near a crossroads in the woods somewhere and poured into the funnel of death. “Catch 22” with a Russian accent. Do we fight until we win? No comrade, we fight until we die!

What sort of foul despot could do this to his own countrymen? Like Germany in World War one, bleeding itself white. A lost generation of men killed and wounded in a failed territorial aggression. A loss which will plague Russian demographics for years to come. 18 to 60 in a meat grinder. Where will the children come from? Like the American South after the Civil War, a nation of widows. A nation of old ladies, young girls, and little boys.

Putin has damaged the very biological fabric of his nation; win, lose or draw. Aside from the material damage, a nation of little boys without daddies. Rarified, privileged and spoiled. What could go wrong, huh? But you can’t run a workforce with a giant gap in workers between 18 and 65. A generation of the mangled, the mauled and the psychologically damaged roaming the streets looking for a peace they won’t ever find.

Any offensive punch the Russian army might have once had seems mitigated by their staggering losses. A stumbling colossus absorbing blow after blow, until punch drunk. Ukraine uses Russia’s advantages against them. Big countries have lots of people, but they also have a huge border to defend. They must bring needed goods and equipment from across great distances.

The Russians had sent the real army to Ukraine and guarded their border with half toothless old men with rusty rifles. So short of equipment, the Russian’s are using Chinese dirt bikes for assaults with the expected results. Chinese made golf carts are used to ferry men and equipment. And who can ever forget about the North Korean made artillery shells. “Are close tolerances important in making artillery shells? No, you can just eyeball it. The worst that could happen is the gun explodes and kills everyone around.

The Ukrainian drones have pushed the Russian fleet from the Black Sea. And the drones have pushed Russian bombers east. Russian oil supplies and depots have been hit. A Russian ammunition depot was recently attacked by drones and thirty tons of munitions went up in a huge fireball. In a fireball so large, they recorded a small earthquake. A fireball with the power of a small nuclear device. That’s gotta hurt. In a further masterpiece of genius Russian design. The dormitories where the soldiers protecting the munitions depot slept while not on duty, was conveniently located inside a ring of large ammunition bunkers. At ground zero, they never knew what hit them.

It was the closest munitions depot to the front and the next closest depot is hundreds of miles away. In a country dependent largely on railroads, it adds significantly to their burdens.

Russia has effectively been detached from the world’s monetary system. Without the skilled labor or access to finance or advanced technology the Russian economy will continue to wither, even if peace were declared today. Like all war economies, social services and infrastructure suffer. Everything is hollowed out for munitions. After the war, it’s even worse as the black market overtakes the open market.

The old Soviet warehouses are just about empty, and the experts pick sometime next year before Russia will be down to zero. But their military is already destroyed, and Russia is destroyed as a military power. The Russian army was once hailed as, “The second-best army in the world.” Is now jokingly referred to as “The second-best army in Ukraine.” No one wants Russian military hardware anymore ever again. No more jet planes, tanks, or helicopters produced ever again.

Vladimir Putin has torn up international norms and like Saddam Hussein, no one will ever trust him enough to do business with him again. Forced by circumstances into a subservient junior partner role to the Chinese and that fat fuck in North Korea. Literally begging for help on bended knee from anyone with anything.

Leaving Vladimir with two choices, bring the army home unilaterally like Russia’s departure from Afghanistan. The risks for Putin would be huge in doing that. Chances are he wouldn’t survive. Despots don’t generally survive failed military adventures. His other choice is to keep on pouring men and equipment into the meat grinder at the front and hope for a miracle. Trading hundreds of lives each day so he can preserve his own life for one more day on the calendar. And Vladimir Putin will make that choice and do it again tomorrow without a thought, and he’ll do it the day after that, and the day after that.

“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch 22