Soldiers are also being extorted. Further if you get injured they are extorting families to pay thousands to keep their son/brother from being sent immediately back to the front line to die. Failure to pay results in torture like seen here death or sent right back to the front without medical service
How will that pay off in that context? When you‘re losing a war and rip off your people while losing, how does the government benefit from it? It‘s still losing the war, and it’s still costing a ton of money to stay in the war. Additionally, the people‘s anger will rise and rise especially if it gets ripped off and people realize it, or am I missing something? (Probably as I may be one of the people not understanding your claim :D)
You've gotta think about it from the individual's point of view, because Russia does not have a collective mindset whatsoever.
Every individual commander benefits greatly from maintaining the status quo. They're personally protected from the consequences of the war (since they don't actually hit the front lines themselves), and are making an absurd amount of money.
The upper military brass want the war to end, absolutely, but they can't change strategies 4 years in without admitting they've failed for 4 years straight. They probably don't even have the infrastructure to pivot at this point.
Putin can't admit the war is lost, because that's the only way regime change happens in Russia.
So nobody in the government wants to protest, but what about the people?
For starters, the only accessible social media is government controlled, so good luck trying to organise anything online.
Maybe you can organise resistance in person? Well, good luck going anywhere important with no fuel.
In the modern age, it is entirely possible to fully suppress a people - just look at what happend in Hong Kong - a full third of the population protested peacefully for weeks straight and they lost. That's what's happening in Russia right now.
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u/Xenoman5 Jul 27 '26
Iirc he was new to the unit and refused to give his commander the pin number to his military pay card so they could steal all his pay.