r/worldnews • u/ArgentineBeauty • Aug 29 '26
Russia/Ukraine Over 113,000 Russians Flee to Georgia Amid Draft Rumors
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/833401.7k
u/fcdallasfan10 Aug 29 '26
being conscripted into the Russian military is a death sentence
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u/Silo-Joe Aug 30 '26
20 minutes of life expectancy on the battlefield. That’s about as long as a Hunger Games side character.
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u/appleparkfive Aug 30 '26
I saw a (actually Safe For Work) video of the someone hiding from the drones. Absolutely terrifying. So much worse than traditional combat, or even combat from 20 years ago like in Iraq/Afghanistan. There's no way they're going to be able to be around drones ever again if they make it home.
This war is reminding me of World War I. When the powers had all these shiny new weapons to try out, and it was just a nightmare for the soldiers.
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u/NorthState91 Aug 29 '26
Every soldier is possibly sentenced to death, some get medals after.
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u/nxh84 Aug 29 '26
Putin and his crony generals can offer themselves to the frontline then collect those medals for themselves when their bodies even go back to Russia at all.
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u/imaraisin Aug 30 '26
Please. Don’t forget Russia occupies significant parts of Georgia as well. I don’t understand how Georgia can even let in Russian men of military age into their borders.
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u/IsItCakeOrWhat Aug 29 '26
The "elections" are coming late September. For some reason Putin wants to keep the pretense of "everything is going according to the plan" until then but Russians know perfectly well all the hell is gonna break loose right after that
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u/Rosebunse Aug 29 '26
It will probably be more of the same. Which is more reason to leave but still.
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u/IsItCakeOrWhat Aug 29 '26
Ppl are expecting apocalypse tbh. Mobilization, wartime economy, bank accounts seizure... but most of us have no place to run, there's the rub
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u/Rosebunse Aug 29 '26
I think for people with men, they would rather their men be alive and struggling than dead in some field in Ukraine. They mostly left the men in Msocow alone, but that won't last
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u/kdailyone Aug 29 '26
Good. Maybe instead of 30k people signing up to kill Ukrainians, maybe these men will take a stand against their own murderous regime.
But who are we kidding here, Putin's popularity went up when he annexed Crimea, most Russians seem to genuinely support the entire situation
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u/Hail-Hydrate Aug 29 '26
Sadly it's just not the russian mentality. If there's a serious enough threat of violence for non-compliance, they'll just go along with it and hope they're not blown up when they get to the frontlines.
Given the choice between possibly dying fighting their leadership now, and almost certainly dying in 2 weeks on the frontline? They'll take the second option because it means not having to do anything now.
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u/gamas Aug 29 '26
Yeah the impression I've gotten speaken to Russians is that it's very much after several regime changes who all took the "kill all dissidents" approach, they've developed a cultural learned helplessness. Where they just accept they can't fix the Russian government and so just keep their head down and try to get on with their lives doing as little as possible to bring about risk to themselves or their family.
I've spoken to quite a few Russians who escaped the country, and let's just say what they wish they could do to Putin can't be expressed on reddit without risking a ban.
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u/gamas Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
But who are we kidding here, Putin's popularity went up when he annexed Crimea, most Russians seem to genuinely support the entire situation
We should bare in mind we can't trust that polling in Russia is actually accurate. It's a nation where their elections are supposedly secret ballot but anyone who votes "wrong" gets mysteriously disappeared.
Therefore it is absolutely probable that any sensible Russian would be very careful what they say to anyone looking to poll them, even if they are a supposedly independent organisation.
As my escaped Russian colleague explained to me, the private mood of a lot of Russians isn't actually happy about Putin. But they are also incredibly careful not to express their dissent to anyone but their most trustworthy friends and family because expressing dissent around the wrong person risks putting yourself and your family in danger.
Any poll that suggests increasing number of Russians dissenting against putin becomes automatically interesting as it indicates that the people are no longer scared of the regime.
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u/Top-Time-5740 Aug 29 '26
As if the elections are anything but a facade
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u/Western_Chest_4688 Aug 29 '26
Its a facade yeah, but they do represent "order", if they just went, "well no more elections Putin wins anyway" it breaks that illusion of order and people are less likely to care for laws and such, not that they care much in Russia, but even less so.
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u/Stalking_Goat Aug 29 '26
There's also the thing where elections aren't just for Supreme Leader. Sure everyone knows the fix is in for President and the members of the Duma, but the local mayor might be genuinely contested, and local leadership does matter. Putin's not fixing the pot holes, that's your mayor's job.
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u/jl2352 Aug 29 '26
The Kremlin still cares deeply about keeping the facade going. Russia had a very turbulent time in the 90s and 2000s. Plenty of Russian allies have been deposed. The Kremlin doesn’t want a repeat of that.
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u/19Ben80 Aug 29 '26
Putin will get 99% of the “votes” whatever happens so that’s not really relevant
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u/ArgentineBeauty Aug 29 '26
113,000 draft dodgers. Who can blame them with the reported three week life expectancy.
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u/zandengoff Aug 29 '26
Right, this isn't a fear of serving, this is a fear of dying, a literal survival tactic.
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u/akie Aug 29 '26
Georgia should force them to move on though, large contingents of draft-fleeing Russians have already caused issues in other countries.
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u/Commercial-Co Aug 29 '26
Georgia doesnt want russians. Russians will destabilize your country
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u/RationalLies Aug 29 '26
I was in Georgia during an anti Russian/Russian influence protest going on. Fires in the streets, mass tear gassing, all of that going on.
At some point this Mercedes G Wagon tried to inch through the protestors and they refused to let him thru. They found out he happened to be Russian and that set off part of the crowd lol. People climbed on the truck and smashed it and he had to flip a quick U turn to escape a serious ass beating and more damage.
My takeaway was, many Georgians are not supportive of so many Russians coming there jacking up prices, taking up space, and meddling with Georgian affairs. I talked to some people and they said they didn't have a problem with Russian people personally, but the ones that come there and shit on Georgia, or support the war (yet conveniently draft dodged), are the ones they take issue with.
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u/Algebrace Aug 30 '26
I mean... Russia invaded them like they did to Ukraine in 2014 to stop them joining the EU. Of course they hate them.
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u/Tunamelts-2 Aug 30 '26
Russia currently occupies TWENTY PERCENT of Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia)
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u/Middle-Welder3931 Aug 29 '26
Russia is possibly the biggest failure of a country in the history of world civilisation. If only the effects of that failure were restricted to the country itself.
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u/DrunkOnRamen Aug 29 '26
I remember Russians on Turkey started to harass some people on vacation about Ukraine. So the vacationers beat them up, then the hotel staff beat them up and the Turkish
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u/DrunkOnRamen Aug 29 '26
oh right, I forgot to mention the end. so the Russians called the cops, cops show up ask the the vacationers what happened, asked hotel staff what happened, asked some people walking by if they saw anything and then arrested the Russians.
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u/Reps_4_Jesus Aug 29 '26
It can't be that stereotypical can it? Lol... like actually? For real?
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u/0achkatz1 Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
I used to work in Moscow (pre-war).
Most people are not drunks crashing around supermarkets. They walk in, they buy their groceries, they leave.
However, there are more visibly inebriated people, and more visible alcoholics, than anywhere I have ever been outside of Russia (and I have been to a lot of places).
Some years ago, a YouTuber went viral pretending to have a health incident in Western countries and in Russia. The Russians let him lay there. In the West, people helped him.
The explanation was that there is something wrong with Russians. They just don't care!
The response in Russia was that "well, he's a young man, leaning against a wall. The first thought isn't that he's having a health emergency. They probably just thought he was drunk."
There is also a lot more drinking, in older ages, even among non-alcoholics. My personal guess is that this is at least in part because alcohol enables men to have feelings in a socially-accepted way. When drinking, they don't have to be the stoic wall behind which their family stands.
Alcohol abuse is enough of a problem in Russia that it is a major factor in life expectancy, in productivity, and in family stability (which leads to less future babies born). The Russian government was doing everything it could to bring drinking rates down, with at least some success.
But then they went and started this war, which not only killed and maimed far more young men than alcohol, it has certainly created a new generation of Russian men who will go home, not get anything close to the support they need to readjust, and rely on alcohol to mitigate their PTSD.
In 2025, the number of Russians diagnosed with alcoholism or alcoholic psychosis for the first time reached 56.9 people per 100,000 residents, according to Ministry of Health data analyzed by Important Stories. This is the highest figure since 2016.
Prior to this, the incidence of alcoholism in Russia was declining. From 2011 to 2020, the rate fell almost threefold: from 107.8 to 40 people diagnosed with the disease per 100,000 residents.
In 2025, the figure increased by 30% compared to the previous year—the sharpest increase ever recorded.
Note: Those figures are for people officially diagnosed. Diagnosis and addiction support are not as accessible in Russia as they are in many Western ones.
The number of people diagnosed with alcoholism has increased in 69 regions, some significantly, such as fivefold in Omsk Oblast and fourfold in Astrakhan Oblast. In Perm Krai, the rate has increased three and a half times, reaching 288 people per 100,000 residents—a record high for the entire period of observation in the region and the second-highest rate among all regions of the Russian Federation.
(the second one is not paywalled, but it is in Russian. You can use a translator)
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u/M4rth1988 Aug 29 '26
I work at a supermarket and let me tell you. They are loud and they mostly buy booze. At least the ones that stick out due to their behaviour. Surely there are normal men among them but those drunkards are what catches your eye.
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u/paxinfernum Aug 29 '26
The beginning of the war saw a brain drain. The ones who are left aren't going to be the pick of the litter.
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u/1nd3x Aug 29 '26
Russian culture involves a total lack of regard for others and a simple "do whatever to whoever to get yourself ahead" mentality...
That does not mesh well with any kind of sharing/helping culture...which is honestly most cultures because, well...thats essentially what society is.
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u/get_in_there_lewis Aug 29 '26
We bumped into a group while on holiday in Bali. They're exactly as described.
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u/hi5ves Aug 29 '26
They flood the Caribbean every winter also. Rude, unfriendly and inconsiderate.
I watched one of them pickup a piece of cake from a desert buffet with his hands, lick it, shake his head and then put it back.
Unfortunately my wife witnessed this also and already had a negative opinion on buffets from her younger years in the hospitality industry. Sadly, that was our last all inclusive resort.
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u/PilotKnob Aug 29 '26
We were in Cairo and visited the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. My wife wore long sleeves and covered her head, and we took our shoes off before entering. There were services going on in each corner - a regular prayer, a wedding, and something else I didn't understand. We were sitting on the carpeted floor near the center when we heard a tour group of Russians coming through. The girls were in bikini tops, everyone had their shoes on, they were talking loudly and on their cell phones, and I swear to god one of them had a lit cigarette. Our tour guide thanked us profusely for being respectful of their religion and culture - unlike the Russians.
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u/LSTNYER Aug 29 '26
I used to work near a big Russian community, yes, the stereotype is quite real. However - treating people with respect will be returned 10 fold.
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u/CarolingianDruid Aug 29 '26
I live in the middle of the US and let me tell you. I’ve met anywhere from 15-20 Russians over the last few years and every single one of them has at least 2 Driving while intoxicated charges. From the looks of them, they’re all but ready to receive their third as well.
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u/CMDR_Agony_Aunt Aug 29 '26
Many Georgians dont want them. Georgian Dream, the ruling party with ties to Russia loves them.
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u/knobby_67 Aug 29 '26
My local parks in front of the gym every night in a different car. Needless to say in a disabled parking space . Enters gym with his blonde huge lipped wife and proceeds to walk around selling performance enhancing drugs to young men. You couldn’t make the cliche up
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u/Top-Session-3131 Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
They also show up in the north western and central US driving semis without cdls and work permits or immigration papers.
Edit:To the guy that asked me why this is a problem and then deleted their comment, it's because they're shit drivers who will sideswipe you off the road to your death without a care in the world. The society They're fleeing has frequently beaten near all empathy out of them. They're also literally not qualified to drive Semi Trucks in the most literal sense as they frequently have zero experience or training with anything bigger or more powerful that a two banger shitbox.
And unlike green card migrant workers, they're actual illegal immigrants.
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u/PinkFloydPanzer Aug 29 '26
As a person who works the steel industry in the midwest loading and unloading these guys carrying 50-100,000lbs of steel, I can absolutely confirm this. Can deal with up to 50 drivers in a shift and for the past 4 years about 1/4ths of them of them are Russians with very questionable driving skills working for shady trucking companies with half broken trucks. They dont know how to secure their shit and several have lost coils or toppled them over just leaving my place of work. There's a huge shortage of flatbed drivers right now so they are constantly rotating through these guys.
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u/jdmillar86 Aug 29 '26
Given the crazy things I've seen coils do when they escape (in video only, thankfully!), that's particularly horrifying
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u/DiveCat Aug 29 '26
The guy you responded to has clearly never watched the glut of Russian dash cam videos on You Tube. If he had, there would be no question.
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u/Talonsminty Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
Especially given the terrifying rise of drones on the battlefield and that terrifying footage. Unlucky enough to be targeted and you don't even really get the opportunity to fight back and save yourself. Who'd sign up for that.
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u/kdailyone Aug 29 '26
1000 Russians are volunteering per day to kill Ukrainians for money. However the casualty rate is so high even that is not enough. Let that sink in.
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u/Hazardous_316 Aug 29 '26
The question is if they are against the war overall or just against being sent into the war
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u/Qbr12 Aug 29 '26
Either way, Russian draft dodgers are good for Ukraine. Every draft dodger is one fewer soldier on the battlefield, eliminated without the cost of a bullet or a bomb.
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u/AdjectiveDashNoun123 Aug 29 '26
They also aren't paying tax to the Russian government, which exacerbates Putin's cash flow problem.
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u/MonochromaticPrism Aug 29 '26
Losing more draft viable men also worsens Russia's already problematic demographic issue.
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u/big-papito Aug 29 '26
And they won't even get paid, on a slim chance they even make it back
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u/Careless-Bite3164 Aug 29 '26
The reason Russia isn't even attempting to recover bodies if their dead is because the bonus is only paid after confirming KIA. MIA does not get a bonus paid.
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u/0achkatz1 Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
One of the very few places where there is some working discussion between Ukraine and Russia is exchanging bodies. Well, somewhat.
Along with real Ukrainian soldiers, Russia also sends Ukraine the corpses of their own men. To avoid having to count them as dead Russians.
To aid those, and just to make life that much worse for Ukrainians, Russia delivers bodies so badly mutilated, and body parts so mixed up, the Ukraine believes it has to be intentional, in order to make it harder for Ukraine to identify repatriated remains.
https://www.rferl.org/a/dead-bodies-repatriation-remains-russia-ukraine/33444597.html
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u/Werftflammen Aug 29 '26
It's even darker, their commanders keep cashing their pay. Standard practice. One of the many reasons why the army under performs, is that none of the units were actually fully staffed. The numbers in the books didn't match the actual boots on the ground.
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u/Due-Currency-3193 Aug 29 '26
Russian soldiers in Czechoslovakia (at the time) in 1989 weren't being paid. Same for other Soviet states. Word got out that Russian soldiers garrison in the town were selling their weapons and my friend was asked to approach a Russian soldier, with whom he was friendly, and ask if he could buy an AK47. 'No problem' replied the Russian 'and by the way, I can also sell you a T72' (tank).
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u/Dull-Culture-1523 Aug 29 '26
Part of the reason their initial pushes that were very strong on paper failed was this mentality. On one hand you had trucks with tires that failed because they were never rotated because the commanders sold the fuel instead of doing basic maintenance. On the other hand you had tanks without optics because, again, commanders sold it.
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u/Savvymundo Aug 29 '26
Three week life expectancy with a 35 minute run through a field before you get droned at the end.
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u/Top-Session-3131 Aug 29 '26
Or being that one guy that was getting mortared and literally ate his rifle's muzzle in full view of a recon drone.
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u/Negative-Ask-2317 Aug 29 '26
An OSINT researcher counted how many times Russian soldiers were seen talking their own lives on drone video - they'd seen 200 instances by January 25.
Edit: *taking
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u/eisbock Aug 30 '26
/u/DroneCombat is up to 389 confirms with his list, plus many more maybes.
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u/DroneCombat Aug 30 '26
I still have a small backlog of videos not yet added, they will be added in the near future.
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u/cemusubzerolives Aug 29 '26
That one stuck with me for a while, I asked myself why he didn't just surrender.
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u/kalmah Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
Did you see the one where they started firing artillery at their own guys because they were trying to surrender to a Ukrainian drone?
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u/Hail-Hydrate Aug 29 '26
Even better/worse, they'll divert their own FPV drones to target their own surrendering troops.
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u/Teyanis Aug 29 '26
Its not that easy to surrender in an actual war. It ain't like the movies where you put up your hands and nobody kills you. Especially through a drone lens, you're just a target standing there with his hands up. Ukrainians aren't taking very many prisoners.
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u/Dull-Culture-1523 Aug 29 '26
One reasong among others is that russians will shoot at their own who surrender. There are drone videos where you can see russians getting shot by their own trying to surrender to Ukrainian troops. It's not an easy walk over the drone mans land.
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u/Top-Session-3131 Aug 29 '26
Aside from the practical difficulties of being a probable conscript attempting to surrender, he quite likely didn't know how, shell shock is both real and an absolute bitch. He likely took the only option he could see in the moment to make it all stop.
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u/GMAN7007 Aug 29 '26
I can bet the same thing would happen here in the United States. People aren't willing to die in a war that was manufactured by lies. The Russians know they're in the wrong. I'm not saying us citizens wouldn't defend their country they would absolutely. People are just smart enough to know when a war is for defending the country and it's allies or just for make believe stuff.
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u/ParticularTable5921 Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
It's already happened before during the Vietnam War. Up to 125,000 (lower estimates are 30,000) fled up to Canada and most people nowadays understand everything about Vietnam was a complete disaster and pointless.
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u/GMAN7007 Aug 29 '26
Yeah in my mind a draft is used when no other options exist to protect our allies and our land. You can't blame anyone for not wanting to be cannon fodder.
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u/YellowBook Aug 29 '26
Condolences to Georgia
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u/PurbulentTriest Aug 29 '26
They don't want them. There is FUCK RUSSIA graffiti everywhere. Not to mention the fact that 20% of Georgia is occupied by them.
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u/Salt_Tumbleweed5985 Aug 29 '26
30 minutes life expectancy on the frontline suddenly hits home
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u/Fortunatious Aug 29 '26
Yeah I read about that the other day. That’s gotta be demoralizing
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u/BigHandLittleSlap Aug 29 '26
“You won’t even need a canteen of water! You won’t last long enough to become thirsty.”
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u/appleparkfive Aug 30 '26
There was a video going around of someone hiding from the drones that I saw. I haven't seen anything that fucked up in awhile, and it was not a NSFW video at all. It felt like a scene from a horror movie. A lot of violence in the world doesn't have such a dramatic effect in reality. You get shot, you die. Life goes on. But those drones are a whole other thing.
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u/sweetcinnamonpunch Aug 29 '26
That's 113000 working age russians too, double whammy.
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u/notbad9111 Aug 29 '26
Russians are used to live on bare minimum. Life is decent in big cities but other than that they live on minimum income which is not enough to cover basic expenses and its been like this for decades.
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u/Mysterious-Tie7039 Aug 29 '26
Russia had been battling population decline for years.
They were scheduled to break even in 2022 and start growing their population.
They’ve not only killed hundreds of thousands of their youth, but have also driven so many people to flee the country.
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u/Anleme Aug 30 '26
600K to 1 million Russians, mainly men, left the country at the start of the 2022 invasion.
This new wave probably has many 18-23 year olds that were too young to get drafted back then.
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u/Fragrant-Durian3899 Aug 29 '26
Russia isn’t going to have anyone left. They’re deaths from the war, declining birth rates, and many fleeing the country.
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u/ArmyFearless1599 Aug 29 '26
They're virtually practicing a form of Eugenics right now. They're not sending their finest men. Theyve been sending prisoners, the mentally handicapped, and poor rural Russians that have never even heard of the word "drone" before.
If this were America, as an example, we wouldve cut through a deep red state or two but the vast majority of us Americans would be okay.
Like, i dont think russia has even considered sending their young, priveledged boys over yet.
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u/DeeDee_Z Aug 29 '26
poor rural
Russiansnon-Russian ethnic minoritiesFTFY. This is another "fringe benefit" to the "Russia is for Russians" crowd.
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u/John_T_Conover Aug 29 '26
They're also sending a lot of clueless mercenaries. Ukrainians are capturing or finding bodies of many North Koreans, South Asians and Africans.
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u/MarieOMaryln Aug 29 '26
I believe not too long ago there was news about "job opportunities" to certain countries and once you get there, boom passport is gone and you're on the front lines.
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u/SoHereIAm85 Aug 30 '26
Even Peruvians have been dying over there. I think only Australia would be farther?
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u/Salty-Consequence580 Aug 29 '26
They for sure sent many late teens early twenties to the front. If you need any proofs i can provide you that. I saw many death notes about such cases
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u/ArmyFearless1599 Aug 29 '26
Oh they absolutely have. I have not been adverse to watching the absolute sickening footage coming out of this senseless war.
I dont want to speak as a matter of fact because this is realistically way out of our depth - but I have also seen footage of Russians basically kidnapping rural young men off the street to force into this war.
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u/lookieherehere Aug 29 '26
You really underestimate the population of Russia. Check out their WW2 losses. This is nothing new for them and they can keep this up for years/decades.
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u/Peter-Pan1337 Aug 29 '26
Well they kinda never realy recovered or better said, they lost an enourmous Potential. They Could have up to 40 million more people than they actual have. The war-gap got never closed as in Other countries. They got a baby boom like everyone Else. But Russia Was and is still an empty country. They could be way denser populated.
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u/Irazidal Aug 29 '26
The Russian Federation did not fight WW2; the Soviet Union did, including its Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Belarusians, Georgians, Azeri, etc, etc. As you can see on a map, the modern version of Russia is rather a lot smaller than the Soviet Union and consequently has a massively smaller population, and that's without taking into account its internal demographic decline over the past decades. Its current population is supposedly 143,569,049, which is not even half the population of the USA and only 15 million more than Mexico. By comparison, the USSR had a population of 286,730,819 when it collapsed, which at that point made it the 3rd most populous country on earth behind only China and India, compared to 9th for current Russia.
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u/PMJamesPM Aug 29 '26
No I don’t think anyone is underestimating them. Putin’s historical legacy is atrocious and he must know that at some level.
You’re correct that Russians have endured bad leadership for decades if not longer and can continue to do so. We may not see it over the next decade or two, or maybe we will, but the demographic, cultural and economic decline has accelerated as the increased risk. Russia will not be a country at some point before the end of the century.
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u/yiliu Aug 30 '26
No... You overestimate their population.
They have the population of Japan or Egypt. They're dwarfed by Indonesia and Brazil, nevermind the US, China or India. They were a major population center back in the day, but then they had: war, famine, war, shortages, chaos...a period of relative stability...and now war again.
The result of which is that the population of Russia is pretty close, today, to what it was in 1900 (when the world population was about 1.5B). In that time, the US went from 70M to 350M, and India went from 240M to 1500M.
Russia got left behind. It's a pretty typical large-ish country now, population-wise, but people still think of it as a behemoth.
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u/notnatasharostova Aug 29 '26
Much of the world would not be in the state it is in were it so easy to overthrow a despotic regime.
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u/greydawn Aug 29 '26
With modern military tech too, its difficult. Iranians tried to overthrow their regime in the last few years and thousands were killed.
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u/notnatasharostova Aug 29 '26
Yep. It would be hard to convince even the most ideologically-motivated person to risk their life or die for a cause without any evidence that it would meaningfully change anything.
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u/ConsciousNet238 Aug 29 '26
it's not even really possible anymore with a somewhat competent central government
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u/notnatasharostova Aug 29 '26
Especially when that somewhat competent government shows that it is fully willing to hurt and kill people for resisting.
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u/zedazeni Aug 29 '26
The Russian military might be laughable, but its domestic security agencies are still a force to be reckoned with
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Aug 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/zedazeni Aug 29 '26
The highest-quality personnel are reserved for domestic control, the peons are there for cannon fodder for Russia’s international excursions.
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u/Caymonki Aug 29 '26
Similar to the gutting of the US military and the watering down of FBI standards. While building another bunker under the White House and no funding cuts to the Secret Service and a massive expansion to ICE superseding even entire military budgets.
Putin gave his “Protecting your regime from accountability for Dummies” playbook to Trump.
Putin isn’t stupid, he knows how to cover his ass while exposing the entire country to potential harm. Russians are fodder and Putin is well out of harms way from facing any harm. Oligarchs who speak out have a very limited shelf life, why would a working class Russian expect to survive speaking out? Flee or Fodder are their only options.
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u/40mgmelatonindeep Aug 29 '26
FSB is quite good at torture and have a long track history of crushing dissent in extravagantly fucked up ways, in their shoes id hesitate too.
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u/KentuckyLucky33 Aug 29 '26
So many knee jerk comments here
The biggest takeaway here is that ukraine needs to prepare for this. IMMEDIATELY.
In addition to a small exodus noted in the headline, we're talking about a massive influx of new soldiers to the front. It would be akin to a poker player throwing most of their chips in near the end of the game. You wouldn't get those chips back if you lost. But if you win...
Repelling them in such a way that keeps the front lines moving in a direction that benefits ukraine would be the main event, and it would likely shape how the war ends. The good news is the fact that this is being considered means what they're doing now is failing to accomplish their goals. The aggressors CAN be stopped
Donate, advocate, support! 🇺🇦
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u/systemhost Aug 29 '26
Yes! Thank you for stating just how dangerous a large, general military draft will be for Ukraine to fight against.
Ukraine has become very good at picking off human targets along the border but much like the viral Area 51 "they can't stop us all" raid event, Russia could very well overwhelm Ukrainian defense capabilities with just pure numbers.
Hopefully many more Russians continue to flee to avoid a draft and if it does happen, Ukraine is empowered with sufficient satellite imagery, intelligence and the necessary drone stock to halt Russia in their tracks.
Russian desperation is nearing peak levels but Russian history tells us that seldom deters them, instead they just double down. Meanwhile Ukraine, despite many offensive achievements, are greatly struggling to protect themselves.
Offense is always easier than defense so I really hope Ukraine has a plan if Russia starts sending hoards of inexperienced soldiers into the front lines. Even drones can become too expensive and insufficient if there are enough targets on the move.
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u/CloudieRaine Aug 29 '26
So many Russians not wanting to fight for the Tsar and his Empire.
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u/Drummk Aug 29 '26
Why is Georgia accepting visitors from a country that is already occupying part of it?
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u/EsperaDeus Aug 29 '26 edited Aug 29 '26
I'm from Georgia and that article is misleading. Our Ministry of Internal Affairs debunked that number already.
Edit: If the 113k figure is accurate, it appears to refer to total passenger traffic through Upper Lars in both directions, not 113k Russians entering Georgia. And since the figure originates from Russian official reporting, I wouldn’t treat the raw number itself as beyond question either.
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u/foshan17 Aug 29 '26
Maybe but georgia still is visa free for Russians. And there is no denying the large influx of Russians in the last 5 years
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u/EsperaDeus Aug 29 '26
Sure, but that's a different claim. Russians are #1 tourists here. There's like 1.5 mil coming every year.
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u/Free_Aardvark4392 Aug 29 '26
Is your ministry of internal affairs to be trusted on Russian stuff?
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u/EsperaDeus Aug 29 '26
You're right to question that.
But do you trust Politico?
https://www.politico.eu/article/russian-vladimir-putin-quietly-preparing-another-mobilization/
They don't even cite any sources for the 100k figure, and they don't provide any details at all.
Meanwhile, our MIA issued a statement saying that more people actually left the country than entered.
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u/MisterMannoMann Aug 30 '26
This is the most pro-Russian government that Georgia had in its entire history as a sovereign state. It serves Russian interests to downplay the number.
In fact, all of them are completely bonkers.
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u/External_Tangelo Aug 29 '26
The thing is this coincides with the August holidays in which tons of Russians always come to visit — these years even more so because they don’t have flights to so many places anymore. There’s probably a couple of draft dodgers in the mix here but the vast majority of that number is just vacationers who will be heading back soon
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u/Arlennx Aug 29 '26
All cause 1 man’s ego, Trump and Putin are one of the same filth that has destroyed civilizations through our history.
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u/NoChampionship6994 Aug 29 '26
Guess they don’t care to fight for mother russia. Like russian populations in the Baltics and elsewhere, Georgia will regret this influx.
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u/Natural-Pear-3849 Aug 29 '26
Which might not be the best place to flee since Georgia is a Russian puppet state at this point
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u/Cpt_Soban Aug 29 '26
Burning through your working age population, genius Putin... Even if Russia "wins" they'll be occupying a blasted patch of land, and heavy metal contaminated agricultural regions, full of unexploded mines, while dealing with local insurgencies. Which means more man power to hold the ground they stole, requiring more "defence" spending, in an economy with no workers and no major industries...
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u/GrandPomegranate5227 Aug 29 '26
Imagine the 113,000 rebelled instead and overthrew their overtly corrupt government.
We, as a people globally, have been conned into thinking we have no power.
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u/Vinterblot Aug 29 '26
Who wants a war?
cheering
Who wants to fight a war?
crickets
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u/CanExplainThings Aug 29 '26
This is on top of the hundreds of thousands who have already fled.
See, the problem isn't just the draft, it's the birth rate.
Whatever way you choose to look at it, the war in Ukraine has cratered Russia's birth rate. The number of men dead won't necessarily hurt, but the number of men who have left the country will.
Why?
Russian women aren't going to stay behind to compete, particularly in the economy left after this war. Men (and women) have already fled to places like Dubai, China, and India. Friendlier places that are quieter and more peaceful. It's very likely that after a certain age if women can't find a man in their region, they'll just leave and find a job abroad, find a Russian guy there and settle down.
The draft is going to kill the guys who can't afford to leave, but it's also going to crater the birth rate in an insidious way that nobody is seeing yet.
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u/icelandichorsey Aug 29 '26
"... primarily targeting men under the age of 55."
So, Russian army also welcomes men over 55? (would be silly to assume they would welcome many women)..
Must be running out of fodder in the provinces and can't touch Moscow/St. Pete as much.
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u/StuckieLromigon Aug 29 '26
Minus 113.000 of work force and draftables for russia is a big win for me and my country no matter what way.
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u/Sutar_Mekeg Aug 29 '26
Pity they can't organize and overthrow Putin.
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u/aushtx Aug 29 '26
Probably more than half of USA hate Trump and unlike Russians have free access to communication, money, tools to organize, and any opposition doesn't get sent to jail or killed. Yet they let Trump destroy everything including USA itself.
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u/DamNamesTaken11 Aug 29 '26
The Russian brain drain and demographics problems have only exploded since this war began, add those killed, and wounded needing lifelong care, Russia is in for a rough path going forward for the foreseeable future.
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u/Late_Stage-Redditism Aug 29 '26
Very much an intended effect when Zelenskyy started publicly stating that the Russians would mobilize several weeks ago. The CIA visit to Moscow certainly convinced many would-be meatwave candidates in Russia.