May 6, 2025
Sergey Lebedev
Shadow of Spring, 2025
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Sergey Lebedev
Shadow of Spring, 2025
« I would like to draw your attention to one specific trait of the Russian or Soviet empire: the extremely low value of human life. This is not just an internal problem. In international relations, a low value of life is an indispensable currency of aggression, a natural resource of sorts, the raw material of war. For an aggressor it can "buy" what nothing else can buy: time.
For decades, Operation Desert Storm, which took place in 1991, epitomized the revolution in modern warfare. Western armies have invested heavily in keeping their personnel out of harm's way.
Putin's army, however, is the army of yesterday. And exactly this is its gruesome advantage. It can sustain losses that would be absolutely unacceptable for any Western country. But it is also technically advanced enough to counter Western military technologies.
Western science was first to "dronize" warfare, to minimize the involvement of troops on the ground and use machines for new tasks.
Putin's army, while also using real drones, “dronizes” the human beings as well. It has turned soldiers into dispensable, single-use units. »
— Exiled Russian author Sergey Lebedev. It is from a speech he gave at The Helsinki Debate on Europe in mid May and adapted as an article at Voxeurop.
Mr. Lebedev focused on Russia's occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II as its greatest crime and the war in Ukraine as a continuation of that crime. The way Russia regards its troops has made such criminality possible.
Even before Communism, Russian leaders regarded their troops as expendable. They have had little regard for the lives of their subjects for centuries. This has continued through the war in Ukraine where Russian officers order their troops to do "meat wave" suicidal attacks which seldom accomplish anything.
The culture of violence pervades Russia's military. That leads to low morale which results in counterproductive poor performance by troops. If your own officers turn their guns on you in battle, why should you bother putting in any extra effort?
Why Don’t Russian Soldiers Revolt?
If badly treated Russian soldiers started shooting abusive and incompetent commanders, the war in Ukraine would end in weeks.
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