[dabigv13]

The "hawks" in the Russian social media sphere definitely do want Putin to declare war and full mobilization, but I disagree that they hold much power in Russia. They are people like Igor Girkin, former separatist fighters and veterans of 2014 offensive. But the people with power in Russia mostly have it because Putin has delegated it to them. The oligarchs are not hawks, the generals are not hawks. They know or do now that the whole war was a dumb waste that individually will mostly make them poorer in the case of oligarchs, or destroy most of their good equipment and troops from the standpoint of the generals. The generals probably are the ones who MOST want Putin to withdraw.

Losing the war would certainly be destabilizing for any personalist authoritarian like Putin. But fortunately for Putin, many of the middle and upper class urban population whose support is probably most important to his rule have not been very directly affected by the war yet. A full mobilization changes that, and again would only mean more dead Russians without any change to the battlefield result.

The current Russian Army is not built to handle a rapid upscale in manpower from a draft, and even less so now that most training officers have deployed along with most of their less than 40 year old equipment.

Some possible 3rd Army reinforcements were seen deploying to Izyum area a couple days ago, and the next day were smoking wrecks. Hard to know for certain their provenance.

[dabigv13]

The "hawks" in the Russian social media sphere definitely do want Putin to declare war and full mobilization, but I disagree that they hold much power in Russia. They are people like Igor Girkin, former separatist fighters and veterans of 2014 offensive. But the people with power in Russia mostly have it because Putin has delegated it to them. The oligarchs are not hawks, the generals are not hawks. They know or do now that the whole war was a dumb waste that individually will mostly make them poorer in the case of oligarchs, or destroy most of their good equipment and troops from the standpoint of the generals. The generals probably are the ones who MOST want Putin to withdraw.

Losing the war would certainly be destabilizing for any personalist authoritarian like Putin. But fortunately for Putin, many of the middle and upper class urban population whose support is probably most important to his rule have not been very directly affected by the war yet. A full mobilization changes that, and again would only mean more dead Russians without any change to the battlefield result.

The current Russian Army is not built to handle a rapid upscale in manpower from a draft, and even less so now that most training officers have deployed along with most of their less than 40 year old equipment.

Some possible 3rd Army reinforcements were seen deploying to Izyum area a couple days ago, and the next day were smoking wrecks. Hard to know for certain their provenance.