Comments by "N Velsen" (@nvelsen1975) on "Russia takes Bakhmut — but the battle continues" video.

@ThePandafriend That's a valid point, but Russian prison recruitment is already becoming a problem. Because the remaining inmates have by now all heard the rumours of 2 hour life expectancies and attacks that take 70-99% casualties. Prison sucks, being in a suicide squad sucks more. Plus having taken 100K prisoners out of the system, at some point Russia will run out. Pre-war Russia claimed to have had 439K inmates of which 93% are male and 6% are foreigners. That's 381K max recruitable (and thus over 26% killed already) if we make unrealistic assumptions like all of them will sign up.... The reality is not all of them are fit for service and some 24% were suspects not yet convicted (who won't sign up) and most of them are in there for relatively minor crimes (who won't sign up because they'll be out soon). Then it gets further complicated because the 'people who don't matter' are also not 100% of prisoners. Some of them have friends, family, money. Their death would shake Russia a lot more than some mentally ill serial rapist only known by his mother, being used as a cannon fodder. It could well be that Russian prison recruitment is already over.
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It's mostly a manipulation: Bachmut is a Russian prestige target. They'll be desperate not to lose it, thus allowing Ukraine the initiative. That's why they attacked the flanks instead of getting into even more stalingrad-sh*it and attacking back into the city itself. Currently it's apparently being staffed partially by forced-conscripts from the occupied regions. Yes, those same forced-conscripts whose lines allowed the Kharkiv counteroffensive to progress at such blinding speed. And you can bet the occupied regions haven't seen a lot of men growing into a military age or migrating there so Russian press-gangs can snatch them up. These are guys aged 40+ and up with some squads made up of guys in their 50's and 60's and since then the situation's gotten worse for them.
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