Paul Goble
Staunton, July 14 – Kazan has announced that it will pay 100,000 rubles (just under 1,000 US dollars) to anyone who brings someone to a military recruitment center to sign up for service in Ukraine. Moscow may welcome Tatarstan’s much-ballyhooed idea; but it smacks of desperation and won’t work, Ruslan Aysin says.
The Tatar political scientist who now lives in Turkey says that few wives and children of men who might be brought to recruitment centers will find takers and that the whole idea will collapse quickly rather than spread (idelreal.org/a/sarafannoe-radio-voennogo-vremeni-aysin-o-planah-tatarstanskih-vlastey-verbovat-na-voynu-po-rekomendatsii-/33031194.html).
Those who hoped to benefit by volunteering have done so and those who want to avoid service have either left or found ways to hide out. Moscow retains the possibility of ordering general mobilization, but the Kremlin knows that is so deeply unpopular that it is casting about for any alternative.
The Kazan authorities for their part, Aysin says, know that Moscow will like what they are proposing even if it doesn’t attract anyone to the colors. They will get credit for suggesting this plan, and everyone will quickly forget that not only did it not work but it reflects Moscow’s increasing desperation to find enough men to fill the depleted ranks of its military.
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