They aren’t mercenaries if they're not paid. The pont of being a mercenary is you get paid to fight for a country/cause not your own. If you’re not paid, that’s impressment.

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 6 points 13 hours ago

They die before they can be paid.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Slavery

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

Close enough

[–] LaFinlandia@sopuli.xyz 14 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It's currently unsustainable.

Russian troop losses in January exceeded the number of newly mobilized and contracted soldiers for the second consecutive month, Robert "Magyar" Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, has said.

That month, Russia recruited or mobilized around 22,000 personnel, while verified Russian losses reached 30,618 troops, Brovdi said, citing data from Ukraine's Defense Forces drone units. The figures indicate a negative balance of 8,618 personnel for the month

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-losses-exceeded-recruitment-for-second-month-in-a-row-but-hur-says-moscow-can-sustain-mobilization/

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 14 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Yeah, that’s the numbers. But I mean the people themselves. Hauled off to a front where their equivalent number and more die every month to the tune of a modest village-worth every month. Are the Russian people so defeated and/or ignorant that they just turn a blind eye and wait for the press gang to take the men in their village?

[–] doo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 minutes ago

Pretty much. The soviets have systematically cultivated political apathy and pootler has brought it to the next level. Imagine having access to millions of bodies and nobody cares when you expend a million or two. That's dictator's wet dream.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 3 points 9 hours ago

Are the Russian people so defeated and/or ignorant that they just turn a blind eye and wait for the press gang to take the men in their village?

Not just Russian people, plenty of gloating Europeans about the good life in Moscow

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 5 points 13 hours ago

People in Moscow don’t care about the peasants.

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 12 hours ago

The answer is in the article itself: “Yet for the first time, Russian troops are being killed or wounded faster than they are being recruited, the Ukrainians claim, a claim backed by western officials.”

So for the past years, it was not a problem to sustain the death toll.