It just shows how effective top down propaganda is.

The British gave time, the Americans gave money, the Soviets gave blood.

The Russian capacity to throw seemly endless bodies toward a goal is virtually part of their mythos. The above quote is from Stalin in regards to defeating the Nazis. The situation couldn't be more different, other than in the propaganda coming from Putin.

I can't remember what podcast I was listening to, maybe a Dan Carlin series, but it was talking about how in this post industrialization + propaganda era the breaking point for nations is far FAR more extreme than it was in the before times.

I'm not sure there is one anymore.

Dwarfed though it is by the heartbreaking tragedy being inflicted on Ukraine, it's tragic too to see Putin's militaristic propaganda embed itself so completely, even among the country's youth.

I doubt even a full mobilisation would cause sufficient unrest to end the war now, nor would an even higher rate of Russian casualties cause Putin to cease his tyrannical conquest.

Honestly, that window of opportunity for Russians has closed, possibly for a very long time. By now, much of the gov is designed to quickly and brutally control opposition and protests.

For contrast: Just on the other side of the border a decade ago, tens of thousands of courageous Ukrainians seized a very similar opportunity. They fought and died for it, did not give up, and won the battle. Fuck Putin and his Yanukovych puppets, hello Zelenskyy and EU. But Ukrainians are still fighting to finish the war. They should be incredibly proud of their achievements so far.

Not likely. Far too few there have the mindset to think that it could work. Putin is just one small leap in the collective imagination away from destruction but it doesn't look like the populace will ever cross that gap.

There was just a story about a group of surrendering Russian soldiers getting shelled by Russian artillery. It isn't 100% clear that it was intentional, but its hard to not envision it as a throwback to the Soviet penal legions of old.

I'm sure by now they have figured out (or rediscovered, more likely) tactics to minimize the risk of their conscripts folding, sadly.

And "that's a nice washing machine, while looting it I should try to carry it in the open during an active firefight"

Sadly they are made to believe that dying is less bad than surrendering.

It's insane how many Russians have volunteered to die for a few thousand dollars, for the past year. But allegedly it's getting way harder to get volunteers for the Russian military.

This is mainly a byproduct of transitioning to a war time economy. Before the mobilization they had a fairly large labour glut, now that they've geared to war time production they're having labor shortages.

The detrimental aspect to this transition is that they're going to have to rely on conscripts for their soldiers as they were already experiencing a really harsh population decline.

The most dangerous part of this whole war won't come for Russia until the war ends, regardless of victory or defeat. Their population decline coupled with the retooling of their domestic economy isn't something that can be undone without major consequences. So they're either going to have to continue the war footing to maintain their economy, or face an economic collapse similar in scope to the USSR.

It’s insane how many Russians have volunteered to die for a few thousand dollars, for the past year.

The driver is information asymmetry on the part of the volunteers. Yes, people are volunteering and dying for a few thousand dollars, but they don't know that.

They know they are volunteering for a few thousand. They don't know that it is certain death.

Which propaganda did it show as false? The only one I know about is the lie that Ukraine is full of nazis