OPINION:
In addition to massive increases in military spending over the last decades, modernization plans to have 70% of the Russian armed forces fitted with modern equipment by 2020, huge snap drills which readily exercise the Russian military, Russian President Vladimir Putin is putting civilians and private companies on notice that they too must be prepared for war.
Recently when meeting with industry leaders in Moscow, Putin said, “I would like to note that the ability of any economy to rapidly increase the output of defense products and services when it is needed is one of the most important conditions of the nation’s military security. All strategic and … large enterprises must be ready for this.” In other words, private companies in addition to state-owned enterprises must be ready to produce war material when called upon.
And it’s not just contractors who are being prepared for war, it is all levels of society.
In the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, a document was recently leaked from the education system which directed even schools to be ready to mobilize in time of conflict. “Local officials in Krasnoyarsk have confirmed the authenticity of the document that was distributed to the region’s schools and that issued operational guidelines for mobilization, wartime conditions and martial law. Nadezhda Kvitkovskaya, the regional education ministry spokeswoman, told Govorit Moskva radio station on Monday that according to federal guidelines, all state organizations should be prepared for mobilization, including educational institutions. Schools and other organizations should know how to “act in critical situations” during mobilization efforts, she said,” reported The Moscow Times.
During the recent Zapad 2017 exercises in Belarus with Russian and Belarusian forces, NATO was extremely concerned the drills were a pretense to prepositioning equipment to be used in any possible invasion of NATO’s northern Baltic flank.
It seems Putin and the Kremlin are very serious about preparing the Russian society for war. In the meantime, America is worried about toxic masculinity.
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