Anton Krutikov
1 min readNov 6, 2022

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Thank you for your analysis. Indeed, the economic consequences of war and mobilization are very important. But unlike the political consequences (which we are already seeing today), economic changes will manifest themselves in the long term. In my previous article, I didn’t mention one important aspect of the mobilization: Russia's demographic losses are not yet critical to the Russian authorities. The flow of young and educated men fleeing the country is balanced by the flow of Ukrainian refugees entering Russia. Even according to official UN figures in August 2022, there were almost 2 million such people. The conflict in Ukraine has an important dimension - it is not a war for territory, it is a war for people. It is a war for their lives and souls in the literal sense of the word. Putin's goal in this context is to get rid of disloyal citizens (political activists are the first to receive mobilization summonses) and to turn the huge mass of Ukrainian refugees into new obedient supporters of the regime. The process of issuing Russian passports to Ukrainians, which began long before February 24, 2022. This is the proof of that. This is necessary to disguise the huge demographic losses in a country that has been losing population every year since 2015 because of the falling birth rate. This new, truly feudal practice of turning foreign citizens into Russians is one of the true but carefully concealed goals of the current war.

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Anton Krutikov
Anton Krutikov

Written by Anton Krutikov

Top writer in history and politics. Historian and political analyst based in London, UK.

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