Putin Learns the Hard Way Why the U.S. Abandoned the Draft

Wes O'Donnell
4 min readSep 26, 2022

Well, that escalated quickly…

Licensed by the author

Since Putin announced his “partial mobilization” of 300,000 troops six days ago, there have been 17 targeted attacks on military recruitment centers and Russian administrative buildings.

Russia announced today that a 25-year-old male opened fire at a military registration and enlistment office in Ust-Ilimsk, resulting in a Kremlin military commander being critically wounded.

In a separate incident, authorities said that a suspect rammed his vehicle into the entrance of a military recruitment center in ​​Uryupinsk early this morning.

The protests are turning deadly.

This comes amid a mass exodus of fighting-aged males from the country.

It’s hard to attach an exact figure to the number of Russians fleeing Russia, but anecdotal evidence from Serbia, Turkey, Georgia, and Finland suggest that number may be in the tens of thousands.

A satellite image from Maxar shows traffic queuing approximately 16 kilometers (nearly 10 miles) north of the Georgian border crossing leaving Russia.

--

--

Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians