Snappledagain's Blog

Russia has an HR problem. The present Russian attack on Ukraine is not a simple land grab. Land is not something they need. It is not about restoring former Soviet era glory either. Russians always feel pretty highly about themselves. Just ask one, they will tell you how great Russia is. There is no greed behind the current invasion. It is need.

To run a modern country, especially if you are trying to manage a grand modern country, such as Russia views itself as being, you need some money, some energy, some steel, some rockets …. The list is long, the things that are needed. But right at the very top of the list is man-power. More than anything else, Russia needs more manpower to keep everything on the rails. And they have been running out of people for decades now, and may very well be up against a wall in the very near future.

A quick Wikipedia search provides us with the following information to consider;

“Since the 1990s, Russia’s death rate has exceeded its birth rate, which has been described by analysts as a demographic crisis.¹ In 2019, the total fertility rate across Russia was estimated to be 1.5 children born per woman, which is below the necessary replacement rate of 2.1, and is one of the world’s lowest fertility rates.² Subsequently, the nation has one of the world’s oldest populations, with a median age of 40.3 years. In 2009, it recorded annual population growth for the first time in fifteen years; and since 2010, Russia has seen increased population growth due to declining death rates, increased birth rates and increased immigration.³ However, since 2020, due to excessive deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s population has undergone its largest peacetime decline in history.^4”

That last little bit … the recent (Current??) CoVid pandemic, may have been the catalyst in Russian decision-making calculus. According to the World Health Organization, Russia has suffered the loss of 351000 of its citizens. That figure, reported by Russian authorities, is very likely shy of the actual value. Nobody, save a handful of Russian authorities really knows the true number that have perished there since the pandemic started. But even if the number were accurate, they could scarcely afford to lose even one of those people.

You need to have a certain number of people in the workforce to drive fire-trucks, provide nursing care, administer banks, and fix telephone systems, and so on. Forget about running an international space exploration program …. They do not have enough people left to change all the light bulbs. The 12000 or so tanks they have? No need to worry about all of those coming over anytime soon …. Nowhere near enough drivers to man them anymore.

Russia has run out of people, and Russian society has already begun to break-down as a result. The writing is on the wall, and President Putin knows this. He needed to act now in order to head-off the catastrophe that Russia will no longer be one of the great nations of the world. As it takes about twenty-five years or so to grow a useful Russian, that makes the emergency surrounding this an issue today. In another twenty-five years there will hardly be any Russians left.

Western countries recognized the same issue emerging within their borders nearly forty some odd years ago. The solution they chose? “Multi-culturalism”. They cranked up the immigration machine and started accepting applications from other regions of the world where people really did not look, act or sound anything like their indigenous populations. But, the imperative was there. Open your mind, and your borders, or watch as your society dissolved into the history books.

Russians have never really been regarded as anything but white. There may be a slight oriental influence in the Far East, but mainly they keep the place pretty white. And entirely Russian speaking too. Rather than open their borders to people from other cultures, they have, in the main, kept themselves pretty isolated from the rest of the world. Certainly, brown, black and yellow have never gained a foothold anywhere in Russia proper.

If only there was someplace where President Putin could look to find some nice, white, mainly Russian-speaking, literate people, already trained to work, that could be assimilated with minimal pain into Russia. Minimal pain for the Russians that is.

Well look what is right next door there. Ukrainians. Forty million of the poor bastards.

Putin is not trying to capture Ukraine for the Ukraine. He could not be less interested in the territory. When he gets done, it will likely be a wasteland. He is there for its other more valuable resource. Man-power. His plan is to capture as many as possible, as intact as practical, and enslave them for the purposes of keeping Russia, the country, running in the glory and majesty to which it has become accustomed.

The current need for more people is urgent, and makes the current situation vastly more dangerous than most people seem to realize. They need to do this, because without the people, Russia will hit a wall within just a few years .. possibly already has …. That will mean some very difficult choices, perhaps seemingly unacceptable choices, be made by Russians and their leader. They need either to adopt a more liberal mindset about immigration, and start trying to attract people there from the middle-east, Africa, and the orient, or, capture and enslave some workers.

Unfortunately, President Putin’s first instinct was the latter.

This needs to be prevented from occurring at all costs, and the costs are likely to be high for everyone. Russia must be compelled to embrace change, as most other countries around the world already have, or face extinction.

Allied countries, NATO countries, nations in the Organization of American States (OAS), and Commonwealth nations must all stop nattering over the detail that Ukraine is not presently a NATO country. It would be perfectly okay to just call them our friend and we should always stand with our friends. More so, perhaps, than even our obligations to treaty organizations.

We need to get into the fight in the streets, and let Russia see western nations standing side-by-side, literally, with Ukrainians, and insist they leave and return to Russia. At the same time, we must offer to help with their demographic challenges, and in so doing, provide them an off-ramp, away from the current crisis.

That second part, getting Russians to accept they must modernize their immigration policies will take some time, and may not be any easy sell. But it has to be made clear to them that under no circumstances will the rest of the world stand-by as Russia attempts to enslave forty million people. As impossible as adopting new immigration standards might seem to Russia today, slavery is simply just off-the-scales unacceptable to the rest of the world, and they better believe we are serious about that.

Two things must happen right now:

1. We get into the defense of the Ukraine with everything we have.
2. Provide President Putin an off-ramp and help to solve the urgent need Russia has. Do not corner him in the process.

Wise-cracks about President Putin’s sanity, speculation about how evil he, or Russia may seem, gay-clown memes of Putin himself, threats of nuclear responses … all of this greatly aggravates the underlying crisis. It all contributes nothing to prevent, or avert, what is about to occur. In the west, we need to understand that Russia may already be in a “nothing-to-lose” position. If Russia is going down anyway, Putin has nothing to lose by taking everyone else with him. Understanding that should guide our actions.

Stand firm. Give him an option. This is existential for everyone.

1. Koehn, Jodi. “Russia’s Demographic Crisis”. Kennan Institute. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
2. “Russia’s Putin seeks to stimulate birth rate”. BBC. 15 January 2020.
3. Foltynova, Kristyna (19 June 2020). “Migrants Welcome: Is Russia Trying To Solve Its Demographic Crisis By Attracting Foreigners?”. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
4. Saver, Pjotr (13 October 2021). “Russia’s population undergoes largest ever peacetime decline, analysis shows”. The Guardian.

Update: 3/24/2022 Ukrainians are being transported to Russia.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-people-taken-russia-1.6396247