Kamchatka Soldiers & Sock Money

About 300 soldiers in Kamchatka on contracts refused to go to Ukraine and fight. Word has gotten out that many are dying and the operation is a disaster. Further, many Russians have friends or family in Ukraine and although the Putin regime and its propagandists, such as Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Solovyev on First Channel have been doing their best to demonize (and dehumanize) Ukrainians as Nazis, many don't buy it. 

The result is that these soldiers are losing their jobs, their apartments are being taken away and the government will prosecute them. We have predicted for some time that the search for enemies would take a turn inwards. Worse is on the way.

Another example of the pressure the state puts on citizens is that they are now "asking" for money from employees of the government and government-owned companies for socks, clothes, and other items for soldiers. Anyone who saw the rally at Luzhniki Stadium with Putin saw a stadium full of people who were required to attend the rally at risk of their employment and possibly worse. 

Dictatorships lack soft power and use coercive diplomacy to achieve results. When that fails, they use the tools of both hybrid warfare and then modern warfare, including targeting civilians.