A coordinated online campaign has reportedly encouraged users to alter fuel station information on digital maps across Russia, creating confusion among drivers.
The activity involves changing station statuses by marking locations with available fuel as empty or showing closed stations as operational.
Supporters of the campaign claim the effort is designed to disrupt travel decisions, increase uncertainty, and create additional pressure around fuel availability.
The september 2022 one? It was yet another of Putin’s half measures. By law he can’t call for mobilization without declaring war, which, you know, he didn’t. It was a legally undefined “special military operation” . Therefore, the mobilization was as well only a “partial mobilization” to test waters, which nonetheless caused massive uproar throughout the country. The regional administrations just barely managed to scrape by and fulfill the required 300k soldier quota and quell down the protests, after which they abandoned the idea. Since then most new soldiers are lured into contract service through:
Deception - bro pls sign this contract pls bro I promise u wont storm trenches bro just pilot the drone bro, far back beyond frontlines bro… - except for smalltext clearly saying that if you’re shit at it or fail training you’ll get reassigned to other units that just happen to storm trenches and with no way out of it. Except for a lucky few that now have to travel between colleges and universities, face students laughing in their faces, and try to convince them to sign up as well. And if they fail to, they themselves go back storming enemy trenches.
Absurdly high (by Russian standards) signing bonuses, salaries and death/injury compensations. Something in the likes of $50k signing, $3k/mo and with various bonuses you can rack up something like $100k a year, up to $200k if you get killed, while average Ivan just barely survives on $500-1000/mo (if he got any job at all). This put a huge strain on Russia’s economy, but it somehow, just barely, is still holding on, though the prices are ridiculous at this point.
Recruiting criminals, which makes it a lot more dangerous to live there when there are killers on the loose, some who did a couple rounds of murdering and trading their decade long sentences into year-long warzone trips
North Korea (and other poor countries)
Otherwise, no, Russia still has a lot of manpower. Not me, nor my friends, nor my relatives, nor friends relatives or relatives friends got called in or served voluntarily. Except for one guy I only saw once who was a gambling addict, got into severe debt, did a trip, drove a supply truck back and forth for a year, returned, repaid all the debts, and, addicted to easy money, went back for a second round and immediately got blown up. RIP bozo.
US recruitment tactics during Vietnam (and even after) weren’t far from this.
When I was in college in the 1980s they offered to pay my full tuition and other expenses ($40K/yr) in exchange for a 2 year tour on a submarine. Didn’t sound like a good deal to me.
In Vietnam, my dad had a friend who did one tour that went pretty easy (by luck) as special forces recon, dropped behind enemy lines to look around, then evacuated by helicopter after a couple of hours. He was so chuffed about being a super soldier he went back for a 2nd tour and actually got shot at that time, he survived - no physical injuries, but he’s deeply mentally scarred for life - has a series of ex-wives who used him for his veterans’ benefits to get their teeth straightened (no lie: 4 sets of braces within 10 years) then they’d leave him. He finally went hermit in a cabin in the mountains.
Back around to modern times (which are not very different), we have a neighbor who went to Iraq - lost both legs, now he’s living on benefits and has a bad-news woman who he somehow doesn’t kick out who’s sponging off of his benefits while abusing him, both strung out on drugs, woman has another boyfriend he openly knows about, cops doing crime scene investigations around their house a couple of times a year… it’s not a great thing for society.
Our US side propaganda paints the manpower issue for Russia’s Ukraine adventure as scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel - 30K Russian casualties per month, forced conscription feeding the frontlines through loopholes in the laws that say they can’t do that, etc. I’m very glad we’re not stuck in Afghanistan / Iraq anymore, that was a huge waste of good people over 9 years - peaking at 170,000 deployed - they say. Our news says Russia has over 720,000 pairs of boots on the ground in Ukraine, with a homeland population half that of the US. That has to hurt a lot, and it’s going to continue to hurt for several generations.