Blood money
In Russia’s Far East, on the island of Sakhalin, next door to Japan, families of the mobilized for the unjustified and unprovoked war against Ukraine receive five kilograms of fish in aid. In the ethnically non-Russian Republic of Tyva (Tuva), they are given a ram each for their sons and fathers impressed into the army, while in the ethnically non-Russian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), only cabbage and carrot are on offer. In Transbaikalia, on the border with Mongolia, families of the mobilized are relieved from paying for kindergarten, whereas in the ethnically non-Russian Republic of Buryatia they can count on receiving ten cubic meters of wood for winter. Apparently gas and oil are not widely available for heating in Asian Russia.
In the European part of the country, that is, in its ethnically Russian (Russkii) core, families of the mobilized may even receive financial support in the form of a one-time payout of 75,000 rubles ($1,225), as was the case in Astrakhan. When the mobilization started touching cities in European Russia, the Kremlin felt compelled to offer a set of legally guaranteed mitigating measures, such as loan and mortgage repayment vacations for mobilized citizens and business owners. The Duma (Russian Parliament) still keeps deliberating a bill that would guarantee payouts of 300,000 rubles ($4,890) for families of each mobilized Russian citizen.
A guarantee of this kind would surely buy ethnic Russians’ lasting passivity toward the war and the possible disability and death of their male relatives. Yet, the Kremlin is biding its time, leaving such payouts to regions’ discretion. Now they vary from 100,000 to 300,000 rubles ($1,630-$4,890). The Russian government already tried out this financial tactics this summer. Families of Russian conscripts, who were illegally sent to the war and died in Ukraine, were given payouts sufficient to buy a Russian-made car. This means that such families received around 700,000 rubles ($11,400) per a dead soldier.
Warfare Statistics
By late December 2022, Russia launched over 16,000 rockets against Ukraine to level cities, destroy civilian infrastructure, hospitals, universities, schools, museums, archives or theatres. During the same period of about nine months, 88,000 Russian troops died in the course of this barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Cumulatively, all the rockets cost about $48 billion, while payouts for the killed soldiers’ families would top a maximum of $1bn, or what the Kremlin receives each day for Russia’s oil and gas exports, despite the sanctions. But certainly, many families of the dead soldiers will not receive the full sum. As usual, military administrators and civil servants will appropriate a big chunk of this money stream. What is more, in the eastern Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation, families of the mobilized from there, do not receive any payouts for their killed relatives.
Hence, I would propose that in late 2022, the actual sum of blood monies paid out in Russia to the families of the mobilized who lost their lives in Ukraine is not more than $0.5 billion, or half a day’s worth of the country’s income for gas and oil sales. In a purely bookkeeping fashion, if the Kremlin could spend $50 billion on the missiles alone during some ten initial months of the war, then the Russian government could easily afford a similar sum for blood money. This mean, should the need dictate, the Kremlin may pay for the lives of almost nine million able bodied males. To put this number in perspective, this is the population of entire Austria, Belarus, Israel, Switzerland or as many as ‘seven Estonias.’
Yet, it is literally nothing, a mere demographic ‘blimp,’ for the neo-imperialist Russia of today with the population of 140 million. Outside the capital of Moscow and some other larger cities, which are politically sensitive for the regime, the vast majority of Russian citizens are expandable. Busy with day-to-day survival, they do not influence the country’s politics or economy. But if the Kremlin’s project of rebuilding a tsarist-cum-Soviet empire is successful and Ukraine falls (God forbid!), the Russian government would receive 40 million ‘new citizens.’ Such a huge number of Ukrainians-coerced-to-become-Russians would make up amply for a couple of millions of soldiers killed in the course of brutal conquest.
Imperial Progress
The figures and comparisons illustrate the depth of present-day Russia’s ‘human resources’ necessary for expanding the empire of rashists’ dreams. Obviously, politics may yet put a curb on the Kremlin’s financial plan of its war on Ukraine, should the population begin to protest or even rebel against the government’s decisions. For the time being, almost four million young and urbanite, mostly ethnic Russians, left the country. With the departure of the most dynamic, innovative, the politically active and independently thinking ones, the authorities may sleep assured. By the same measure, the remaining inhabitants became even more passive and silently accepting of whatever a hardship the Kremlin may hurl their way.
Propaganda and draconian censorship laws effectively silence the few brave ones who did not flee and are still ready to speak truth to power. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has made the war into the easiest and most widely accessible channel of social and economic advancement for tens of millions from the Russian countryside and small towns. This glubinka (‘глубинка’, as much a socio-economic as geographic outback, literally the ‘deep pit’) is set to become an inexhaustible source of cannon fodder in the foreseeable future. Nine-tenths of all Russians live in the glubinka, dreaming of a better life in Moscow, St Petersburg, or at best in the West.
The last wish constitutes quite a paradox in the context of the Kremlin’s anti-Western war rhetoric. But people follow the example of their social betters. Mr Putin’s current concubine lives in Switzerland, while his former wife enjoys luxurious homes in France and Spain. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who continues to justify to the world Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, used to rest in his $5-million apartment in downtown London. Russian oligarchs and civil servants tend to reside in the West, where they also invest and hide their wealth outside the reach of the Kremlin’s long grabbing hand.
In early November 2022, the Russian president signed a decree that guarantees the initial monthly salary of 195,000 rubles ($3,190) for the mobilized. It is at least ten times more than any good salary in the Russian glubinka. This offer is a clear-cut possibility to get out from this vicious circle of hopelessness. Should a mobilized soldier survive for a year on the front, he can earn as much as he would get for a decade back home, and that provided he would find a good job, despite – quite typically – his pronounced lack of skills and chronic unemployment that plagues the glubinka. In addition, the army provides (however poorly) for his heeds, while the soldier has nowhere to spend his earnings when on the front. On top of that, he can boost his income with officially approved marauding and looting.
Putting life in harm’s way and killing Ukrainians in an industrialized fashion appears to many glubinka inhabitants a legitimate business opportunity of a lifetime. Anyone would kill for it, wouldn’t he? And the Kremlin can easily afford to provide this Russian dream of wide appeal. Cumulatively, salaries for the so far 300,000 mobilized would add up to almost $1 billion a month, or $11.5 billion per annum. The last number equates to the income gained by Russia for 12 days’ worth of its oil and gas exports. A steal, indeed. Furthermore, at least a third of the mobilized will not live to see the first year of their service, meaning $2-3 billion savings for greasing the palms of loyal civil servants. At this moment, Russia expands seven of its own troops to kill a single Ukrainian soldier.
Divide et impera, again. As long as the new tsar wants. Боже, Царя храни! Bozhe, Tsaria khrani! God Save the Tsar! Let the world tremble unless it can save itself of rashism and neo-imperial Russia.
