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Jul 16 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Moscow woman reported on her son who was dodging the draft. He is 26 and would turn 27 in three months. In Russia you can't be conscripted once you're 27, so time is short. He tried to launch an IT startup but failed and closed it in Jan 2022. After a conflict she reported on him
Москвичка сообщила в МВД, что ее безработный сын уклоняется от службы в армии - Газета.Ru | Новости В Москве после ссоры с сыном мать сообщила в МВД, что молодой человек уклоняется от службы в армии, сообщается в Telegram-канале «Осторожно, Москва». https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2022/07/16/18139466.shtml
Another similar publication. A mother was upset about her 22 y.o. son playing in Counter Strike and earning on it, so she reported about him dodging the draft. Btw: that's a news from late May 2022, so the war had been going for three months mk.ru/social/2022/05…
В Одинцово мать сдала сына-уклониста в полицию из-за любви к играм Жительницу подмосковного Одинцова удручало пристрастие 22-летнего сына Кирилла к видеоиграм https://www.mk.ru/social/2022/05/29/v-odincovo-mat-sdala-synauklonista-v-policiyu-izza-lyubvi-k-igram.html
PS These stories make total sense. Quite a few parents from the world view their kids as a financial resource. That's absolutely normal. Some sell them into prostitution, others - as a cannon fodder. In modern Russia sending your son to army can be a great investment
If it were up to me, parents of dead soldiers should receive zero monetary compensation after the war. I would even say that it is the payouts from Putin that explain strange indifference of families towards the ongoing war. Who's gonna complain if investments pay off lavishly?
There's nothing dehumanising in these stories. Parents who sell their kids into a brothers are fully human, just as these mothers. They just see their children as resource and invest it smartly. Once the system of incentive changes, their behaviour gonna change immediately, too
If you advocate for *any* form of financial support for these "grieving families", you reinforce the system of incentives that made this war possible. After the war they should be receiving zero humanitarian aid or other support. The system of incentives gonna change accordingly
The only way for a system of incentives to change is that all those families just lose 100% of their investments with no monetary compensation at all. It means that in the future others will be disincentivized to sell their kids as the cannon fodder since that doesn't pay off

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More from @kamilkazani

Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 17
Great question. You see, many scenarios that kinda seem plausible ("Dagestan Rebellion") are unlikely to happen exactly because they're just too foreseeable. Muslim rebellion in Caucasus seems plausible not only to you, but also to Kremlin. So it took certain precautions (not🧵)
Regarding Dagestan, Kremlin identified potentially disloyal settlements. Such as Gimry for example. At the entrance to any of them they put a checkpoint with an armoured vehicle standing there 24/7. They check documents, don't allow any outsiders and kinda show they keep control Image
To my best knowledge, they tended to put the National Guard from Tatarstan to guard potentially disloyal settlements in Dagestan. Kinda control Muslims with Muslims. These guys stand at the most risky positions, but overall Dagestan was full of federal forces when I visited it
Read 16 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 16
Combination of land and river routes. Which made the cost of Pacific navy (and thus Alaska expansion) prohibitively high. Add to that that profits from Alaska were low as Russia was not allowed to sell those furs to China by sea like Westerners. And you'll get why Russia sold it
While Westerners traded with China by the sea, Russia was allowed to trade only via the Kyakhta town located deep inland. So you either carry Alaskan furs to Kyakhta or sell them to Americans who were allowed to do maritime commerce with China. Usually Russia chose the latter
Basically this asymmetry: prohibitively high costs of maintaining Alaska and the absurdly low profits from it were a major reason why Russia sold its only overseas colony (To be fair many of the Russian Far Eastern possessions were supplied by the sea routes via Suez, etc.)
Read 4 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 16
You could add Russia to the list. Strange it may sound, its pattern of expansion was similar. Except it was potamic rather than oceanic. In this respect it kinda resembled Portugues expansion in what is now Brazil. And yes, Russia struggled to go far away from the rivers, too
Consider the map of Russian admiralties till 1680-1800s. Some of them look "logical" being located at the cost, like in St Petersburg or Arkhangelsk. But Kazan or Voronezh are deep inland. They would build ships there and then go down the river to the sea. Irkutsk is even better
Irkutsk admiralty didn't build ships. But it prepared all the equipment & components for the Okhotsk shipyard. It was a very northern Okhotsk that was the initial Russian stronghold on the Pacific. Alaska was colonised from there. What is now Vladivostok was annexed only in 1850s
Read 16 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 15
In modern Russia the words "musicians" and "orchestra" have acquired new connotations. In war-related materials they serve as references to the "Wagner" mercenary company which fought for Putin in Syria, Central Africa and now in Ukraine

(a short promo 🧵 for the #rheinmetall)
Wagner is founded by Evegeny Prigozhin, a St Petersburg businessman close to Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin either made his fortune in restaurant business or used restaurants as a cover. Later he would organise catering for the Russian leadership, so Prigizhin was called Putin's cook
Wagner company grew big. A list of their job openings from their Vkontakte page. That gives some idea about the idea and variety of equipment they are using. That's a full scale private army vk.com/pmcworld
Read 15 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 14
Since 2014 Rheinmetall could not be building Mulino *directly*. They had to "leave" the project to a Russian company, which they would provide with supplies to finish construction. An additional layer was added to this project. And my sources say this layer was stealing too much
According to my sources, the main problem was institutional. Once Rheinmetall could not manage the Mulino construction directly, it was delegated to a Russian company Гарнизон. Which maximised short term profits for its management. That's why it is of lower quality than planned
When discussing sanction policy many underestimate how difficult it is to do stuff. Let's say Putin can't get sth from Europe. "Then he could just buy it through X". No, it's not "just". You can bypass sanctions by adding layers & proxies. But it will be very much more expensive
Read 8 tweets
Kamil Galeev Profile picture
Jul 13
Daily reminder that Putin's army of invasion was trained on the Rheinmetall-built training centre Mulino. In 2014 they "left" and construction was finished by "Гарнизон" company, probably a proxy. 100% of its imports came from Germany, last Rheinmetall shipments coming in 2019 Image
In 2011 Rheinmetall got a contract for building a training center in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. They modelled it after the training center of Bundeswehr in Altmark. They planned to build "the most advanced system of its kind worldwide" Image
Mulino started in 2011 was the high point of Serdyukov's reforms. Two things you must understand about Serdyukov ministry:

1. No other minister of defence made such a big focus on the land army
2. No other minister of defence was so eager to import ready solutions from the West Image
Read 18 tweets

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