The race is on to escape out of Russia from the Daily Dirt Digger.
Terrified Russians are scrambling to flee the country today with one-way flights out of Moscow sold out after Vladimir Putin sparked mass panic by ordering a troop mobilisation in a dramatic escalation of the Ukraine war.
Prices of the few remaining tickets sky-rocketed, driven by fears that Russia’s borders could soon close or of a broader call-up that might send many men of fighting age to the war’s front lines.
Tickets to Johannesburg for a family of three were earlier fetching £44,000, while the cheapest flights from the capital to Dubai were costing more than £8,000 – about ten times the average monthly wage, for a one-way economy fare.
Protests have also started to spring up across the country, with Putin’s feared ‘Cosmonaut’ armed police deployed to quell the unrest.
They can’t go to many places. Turkey, Dubai, Montenegro, S. Africa among them.
Peter wrote:
They can’t go to many places. Turkey, Dubai, Montenegro, S. Africa among them.
Serbia and China maybe plus some other states in the sand. But they are also heading for Finland and therefore the EU, hoping to get protection there. So now there are two streams of refugees heading this way…
Not to speak of many who scramble out of Moscow towards the vast and not exactly orderly parts of Russia where they won’t be easily found. Sibiria is huge.
The real question is what Putin will do once he realizes he has lost the war and therefore is likely to be replaced. Will he be desparate enough to finally pull the nuclear trigger on battlefield nukes to stop the Ukrainian advances, or even go for the final option and attack a major capital in order to make his point? As a matter of fact, he could have gotten rid of most of his western opponent leaders by bombing London last Monday, thankfully he did refrain from that.
One can always hope for the Russians to finally realize what is going on and rise up, yet I won’t hold my breath. Putin has always been someone to do what everyone thought unthinkable, so I suppose all that remains is to find out if he will continue to do so until the very end.
1000 arrested yesterday in Russia’s new wave of mobilisation to collect 300k more men to die in Ukraine, on top of the 55k who have died already.
Hopefully this will make Russia’s brainwashed population realise something is going on.
Peter wrote:
Hopefully this will make Russia’s brainwashed population realise something is going on.
Many did, well before even 2014. But what could they do other than escape?
For the single citizen, the options against the massive suppression apparatus in Russia are close to zero. Lots of voices now demanding they should rise against the state, but this is not realistic. The only people who could do anything are perhaps groups within the security services or the army, and they would have to be very well organized and hit at many places simultaneously. And it wouldn’t turn for the good, because currently it seems those who could organize enough operators to overthrow Putin would even be worse, like for example Prigozhin or Kadyrov. Prighozhin, “the cook, has more than 2000 PMCs in the FSO, kind of a private security detail who takes care of Putins assets, and the Wagnerites of course. Add to that all the apparatchiks in the FSB, the GRU, the prison system, the special state police, the army groups and of course Gazprom has their own clandestine group. It’s a mess, everybody mistrusts everybody else. And the internet is being watched.
Russian citizens are brainwashed…everybody is escaping Russia…Russia is losing the war…
I am just baffled.
Although the effect of the western propaganda machine is extremely effective, I am quite surprised by the huge misunderstanding on how we got here and the total blackout on how the Russian side thinks, feels, and sees things.
Of course, I am not talking about intelligence agencies but, the general public and the political class.
Furthermore we, as the collective West plus Australia, New Zeeland, and Japan, fail to appreciate how the rest of the world does not share our general sentiment.
We are essentially fighting the US’s War against Russia and we are paying the price.
With the referendum and the possible annexation of the eastern territories, Russia’s military doctrine will come into play.
That will change the equation. Never poke the bear.
Ah, the Kremlin trolls have made it to EuroGA too!
lowandslow wrote:
We are essentially fighting the US’s War against Russia and we are paying the price.
Who are “we” ? How are “we” paying the price? The only ones who are paying here is the entire Ukraine and all it’s citizens together with lots of Russian soldiers.
LeSving wrote:
Who are “we” ? How are “we” paying the price? The only ones who are paying here is the entire Ukraine and all it’s citizens together with lots of Russian soldiers.
Indeed. And far from thinking they are being used, they are very grateful for the support that they are getting from the west.
lowandslow wrote:
With the referendum and the possible annexation of the eastern territories, Russia’s military doctrine will come into play.
So what you are saying is that the moment those annexations are through, any form of attack onto these territories will be regarded by Russia as an attack on it’s own territory? Which is not exactly new, as the same has been claimed for Crimea.
This coincides with some statements I’ve read about the red like Putin would use to justify the use of tactical nukes against Ukraine, the moment someone would try to take back Crimea.
