The russian military is a human trafficking ring disguised as a professional military.
“Russia expands practice of kidnapping, enslaving, and sending young men off to die for a despot”
Press gangs are back!
Earlier, it was reported that in the first quarter of 2026, the number of new contract soldiers in Moscow and the regions fell by an average of one-third compared to the same period last year.
I’m finding it hard to believe that those previous numbers were voluntary either. But I know little about Russian society.
Neither do I, but note that this is also a feature of the russian military recruitment system, it is an opaque system with many overlapping layers of obscurity that shapes the movement of humans (an age old pattern not unique to russia, look at the history of the british navy…) such that somebody in Africa can sign up to be a cook in an eastern russian town for a contract and find themselves in a mass meat wave assault on the Ukrainian frontlines without knowing what the hell happened.
This same pattern is no doubt iterated multidimensionally in russian society, but the details I don’t know.
The point is, war is awful, the people sent to do it should know what they are being signed up for, they should be cared for and allowed contsct with their loved ones as much as is able, they should be properly trained and equipped and sent in with every effort to increase their chances of success and then no matter what happens supported as a veteran by their society. This is clearly not happening in russia and that negative space speaks volumes for what multidimensional violence must be happening that we cannot see.
That would match different reports I’ve read. What an utter tragedy.
I can’t source this now, but apparently Russia has a lot of influence in online spaces in Africa. I can absolutely see some poor souls thinking they are moving there for a better life.
Which is why the best way to smash the military might of russia is to not lean into the flattening of who the russian soldiers are, but rather flip the spotlight back on russia and start going to all of those countries and making a loud stink about the fact that the governments of those countries are allowing the youth of their country to be trafficked by russia into being thrown into a human meatgrinder pointlessly.
The russian military is a human trafficking organization disguised as a professional military, so it follows then that this in addition to continuing to fight the ground war in Ukraine is how you wholistically fight the russian war machine on all fronts.
Human trafficking facilitates all kinds of other problems for some reason I gesture at the picture of Trump too so fighting this way will make you many allies as much as it will feel like the enemy you are fighting is overpowering.
Again if all of this is happening with forrign soldiers YOU KNOW it is happening in similar analogs domestically.