Why Russia Needs Many Casualties

And where on earth is NATO?

Flag of Bshkortostan

During Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, NATO committed troops and logistics to a drawn out war against the Taliban, a war, need I remind anyone, they lost — is that why the silence is deafening, above the bombs dropped over Ukraine?

There are always all kinds of excuses, none of them valid, explaining what NATO could have done, to easily beat the Taliban. Over 250,000 Afghans died in the invasion of NATO troops. Let’s not for one minute pretend NATO did not try very hard to set the country on a solid democratic course. It failed. The U.S. failed. We failed. How? How is it possible such a strong alliance, reportedly the strongest the world has ever seen failed? At a stretch, the Taliban were receiving some form of limited support from the Pakistan Secret Intelligence Service. They weren’t receiving any from ISIS, that’s for sure, who are a sworn enemy, nor Iran. Were they really getting finances from a few Saudi princes?

In theory the Taliban were never popular enough to garner proper support, so how did they manage to take over the government of Afghanistan again? The loss of Afghanistan merits serious study. It has been left wanting, and one finds barely a page at any level, in any publication.

Despite efforts from Putin supporter Viktor Orban of Hungary, who claims Afghanistan and Ukraine are the same kind of country, Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with Afghanistan, obviously. If Biden is looking back to the disastrous evacuation of Kabul as an excuse to not get properly involved in Ukraine other than snarling about this being a war for democracy, he is sadly very mistaken.

To now basically ignore the war in Ukraine, sending enough to renew stocks of equipment and making suitable speeches of support is not a strategy that covers for what are serious issues within the alliance. Drones, and missiles regularly fall, or are fired into NATO territory: some make the news, in Romania, Poland and Latvia. NATO lied. It is not even protecting their own territory. Not one drone or missile has been shot down. There is no excuse, not even of inability to defend against sporadic drones or missiles for such a dismal performamce..

We have South Korea, it is said, mulling over ways to counteract North Korea’s new belligerent role. This unfortunately has become a chance for NATO to sit back and see what South Korea decides. Why is it not NATO making these kind of decisions?

And so what about the view from the war from Russia? Well, first of all they do not care how many bloggers, Instagrammers, those on Mastodon, Twitter (no, not X), Telegram etc etc keep pointing out how many of their troops have been killed. Actually, it is to their advantage.

Most, by far, of the Russian troops killed in Ukraine are Bashkirs. Second on the list are Tatars. Together citizens of these republics make up nearly 50% of those killed in the war from the Russian army. Bashkortostan and Tatarstan are (historically very tolerant by the way) Muslim republics within Russia. Should the Russian state weaken, it is in the Kremlin’s interest that there are not too many Bashkirs and Tatars of fighting age around that can take part in any kind of separatist conflict with Moscow, because the reasoning and evidence is that they probably would.

Both Bashkirs and Tatars are Turkic people, and both republics are not poor, not small, and not far from Moscow, It is very clear that there has been a huge effort, locally and from Moscow to ensure many men from the two republics participate in the war without any worry about them surviving it. On the contrary. Let me state it again: it is in the Kremlin’s interest to lose as many Tatars as possible, and especially Bashkirs, who have long harboured grievances against Moscow.

Even as late as 2008, in response to Russia recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People organisation declared Tatarstan independent and asked for United Nations recognition. The declaration was ignored both by the United Nations and the Russian government. Bashkortostan has seen demonstrations against Moscow rule only a handful of years ago. But Moscow has long sought to weaken the two republics: a famine occurred in the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921–1922, as a direct and deliberate result of Kremlin policies. The famine deaths of between 500,000 and 2 million Tatars in the Tatar ASSR and in the Volga-Ural region in 1921–1922 was catastrophic as half of the Volga Tatar population within Bashkortostan died.

Those who explain that Russia is empiralist in mindset are right, but that statement hides an insidious fact: Russia remains an Emporium inside its own borders, with republics that are under Russian colonisation, for example the republic of Mari El, which borders on Tatarstan, and which to all intents and purposes is now a Russian-speaking republic, with no schools in Mari language or any vestiges of Mari culture, a particular shame as Maris are pagan.

And yet it is from these republics that Russia continues to draw the majority of its troops from: that soldiers are coerced into signing up for the army is in no doubt. These are not poor republics like some others, but there has been real efficience in ensuring men in these republics end up making a great part of the troops sent to Ukraine.

Having so many troops means that Russia is able to wage a 24 hour war on the front in Ukraine, with for example three battalions working in shifts, against one same battalion on the Ukrainian side, fighting a 24 hour shift.

How Ukraine manages to continue like this is nothing short of amazing, and tragically this could be mitigated with proper weapon and ammunition supply from the West. But the West has proved more often to be talkers, with extreme reticence. This is costly, in great part due to the limited weapon supply instead of a considerable increase, accompanied by a logical lack of bossy interference in telling Ukraine what is and is not allowed — not least by some large western aid agencies insisting Ukraine should not be fighting in “civilian” areas. Stick with Ukrainian NGOs folks.