Moscow Elite Decides on War but Doesn’t Send Its Children to Fight, ‘SerpomPo’ Telegraph Channel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 21 – In Russia, the war in Ukraine is being fought the way all Russian wars are, with the bosses making the decision to use force but not dispatching their children or grandchildren to share in the fighting or even play supporting roles like nurses, the influential SerpomP telegraph channel says.

            The top elite isn’t doing even what it could easily, providing its numerous houses for the use of people displaced by the fighting, the channel continues. And none of the leaders cheerleading for war has announced he or she will make a contribution to the needs of the refugees (t.me/SerpomPo/12250 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=62132D789E80A).

            Nor have there been any reports that “the leaders of the country and its deputies hve sent their children and grandchildren as volunteers” to the front, or even that their daughters or granddaughters have signed up to be nurses in field hospitals, as the children of the tsar did a century ago.

            In war as in peace, the bosses expect to make the decisions, take all the credit, and pocket all the benefits; and they assign to everyone else the task of carrying out orders and dying for the Kremlin without much prospect that they will benefit at all and with the certainty that the children of the elite won’t be serving alongside them.   

            It mattered profoundly that the children of Stalin and the top Soviet elite served in the Red Army during World War II. It gave Soviet citizens the sense that everyone was carrying part of the burden. But now, Russians today know that the Putin elite isn’t prepared to do the same despite its bombastic patriotism.

            At a certain point, that becomes unsustainable. At the very least, the sense of burdens not shared in common will further undermine the legitimacy of the Kremlin rulers and their wealthy and powerful associates.