December 3, 2024: In March 2023 the current leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was indicted as a war criminal for kidnapping and taking to Russia over 300,000 Ukrainian children. The youngest ones were adopted by Russian couples while the older ones were sent to foster homes or facilities to live until they were 18 and eligible to leave or be conscripted to fight in the Russian army.

Putin is also in trouble for the misbehavior of Russian troops inside Ukraine. Russians have been documented killing civilians and looting homes and businesses. The Ukrainians have been fighting back, including civilians who picked up weapons on a local battlefield. In another incident an elderly Ukrainian gentleman was given an RPG rocket launcher by some passing Ukrainian soldiers and told to use it whenever an opportunity presented itself. That occurred a little later when the Ukrainian civilian with the RPG watched from a window of his home as a Russian fuel truck passed by. This vehicle was part of a supply convoy. The RPG was fired at the fuel truck and on impact the truck burst into flames. The fire spread to several other trucks. No one actually saw who fired the RPG and it was only later, when the Russians were gone that the man with the RPG told neighbors what he had done to the hated Russians. This man was not alone, many other Ukrainians engaging in acts of sabotage against the Russians.

Ukrainian civilians aren't the only ones angry at Russia. Recently the Indian government demanded that Russia explain what they were doing with Indian men lured to Russia to take well-paying jobs as security helpers. The Russian recruiters described these jobs as having nothing to do with combat. That was a lie. Indian men who responded soon found themselves in the Russian army and headed for Ukraine. The families of the kidnapped Indian men complained to the Indian government, but the Russians refused to halt their kidnapping program. The new Indian recruits don’t speak Russian and do not want to join the Russian army or fight in Ukraine for the Russians. Many of these men probably don’t know where they are headed, but they do realize the Russians are unpredictable and that something strange is going on.

Russia treats its own soldiers in a similar fashion. The Russian army did not tell Russian soldiers sent into Ukraine in 2022 that they were invading Ukraine. The Russian troops were told they were going somewhere, presumably in Russia, for training exercises. When the Russian soldiers in Ukraine were fired on by Ukrainians there was confusion among many Russian soldiers, but some fired back, and Russian officers were ordered to make sure no Russian soldiers fled. Any who attempted to flee could be shot by their officers. The Indian recruits got the same treatment and quickly figured out that they would live a little longer by following orders to move forward. Over a thousand men were recruited by Russia from Nepal and got the same treatment. Russia is also seizing Central Asian men who came to Russia for jobs. This was because so many working-age Russian men had either been taken by the army, fled Russia or are hiding from conscription, often with the aid of their employers.

Russian recruitment techniques were one of the many unusual, to Ukrainians and Westerners, practices that were revealed after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since 2014 Ukrainians have known that Russian soldiers were unpredictable and suffering from some unexpected problems that made them this way. Further investigation by Ukrainians and their allies revealed that it was failed efforts to reform the Russian army since the 1990s that caused these problems. Since 2014, when Russia first attacked Ukraine and seized Crimea and some other territory in eastern Ukraine, it was unclear what the Russian goals were.

Before 2022 Russian leader Vladimir Putin went from talking about Ukraine being absorbed by Russia to sending more and more Russian troops to the Ukrainian border. Putin believed, despite the warnings of senior army officers, that the army’s dismal reform efforts since the 1990s had magically worked as nearly half Russia’s combat units assembled on the Ukrainian border. Reports from the Russian capital, which Ukrainian military leaders believed, indicated the decision had been made to invade despite obvious defects in the training, morale, and equipment of Russian units. Putin believed in his own propaganda and none of his associates was willing to contradict him.

The reality of the differences between Russian and Ukrainian forces was soon made clear as the Russian advance was stopped short of its goals and took heavy casualties in the process. Copies of the attack plan, which were only distributed to a few senior commanders leading the attack, showed that the Russians believed they could quickly reach and take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and replace the government with a pro-Russian one and declare the war over. At that point the rest of Ukraine was supposed to surrender and get used to being Russian once more.

Many Russians, especially recent veterans or parents of sons approaching conscription age, knew the truth and were perplexed at the decision to invade when so many soldiers were poorly trained and suffering from low morale. Conscripts, supposedly prohibited by law from service in a war zone, were sent in anyway.

Russia played down these losses, but the Ukrainian military maintained and published daily updates of Russian losses in terms of soldiers killed, wounded, or captured as well as equipment losses. After thirty days of fighting the Ukrainians were claiming that over a third of Russian troops sent into Ukraine had been killed, wounded, or captured, with even larger proportions of vehicles and weapons lost. After six weeks the Russian military admitted that losses were heavier than previously acknowledged but would not give exact figures.

Currently troop Russian morale is low because they are not fighting to defend Russia but to invade a neighbor. Russian leader Vladimir Putin insists that Ukraine is a separatist portion of Russia that must be reabsorbed and become Russians again. Now, nearly three years into the war, Putin refuses to admit his forces are being defeated and suffering high casualties.

Ukrainians disagree with this assessment and few Russians are willing to fight and die to make it happen. This is a serious problem, and the Russian solution is to coerce foreigners to fight in Ukraine. There foreigners do not fight with much enthusiasm and would rather be anywhere but Ukraine or Russia. Since the invasion of Ukraine, nearly a million Russians have left Russia to avoid the war or the economic side effects caused by the extensive economic sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin dismisses all this as alarmism and insists that the special operation is proceeding according to plan. It is not, but Putin controls Russian media and demands that only good news be published. That means there are two realities for Russians, one for Russians fight and drying in Ukraine and another for Russian civilians back home who are told the Special Operation is proceeding according to Putin’s plan.