Astolphe de Custine, Letters From Russia - 1839

Russia has a long history with alcoholism. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, drinking was in decline. Now, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, official figures show alcohol addiction is surging again for the first time in a decade.

Vodka sales this year surged to a record high and policymakers are scrambling to halt a rise in alcohol-related deaths. What has changed is the war. It is becoming increasingly clear that the fabric of Russian society is falling apart.

As in the 1980s, Russian soldiers are returning from the frontline wounded and traumatized. Thousands more are dying, leaving grieving families at home.

But what is happening today is on a completely different scale. Around 15,000 Soviet soldiers died in Afghanistan. The Russian death toll in Ukraine is at least ten or more times that already.

Between Feb 24 2022 and Nov 19 this year, there have been at least 120,000 Russian military deaths in the war in Ukraine, according to analysis of probate records by Mediazona, a site that works in collaboration with BBC’s Russian service.

As many as 728,000 more have been injured, according to analysis by The Economist, based on leaked documents from America’s defense department.  Vast numbers of them have turned to vodka to drown their pain and trauma.

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On November 27, a powerful force led by Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched an offensive in northern Syria. Taking advantage of the dysfunctional Assad regime forces – the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) – and Russia’s preoccupation with its grinding war in Ukraine, HTS and its Turkish-supported allies advanced to the south – and swiftly took the city of Aleppo from Syrian strongman Bashar Al-Assad, his SAA and his Russian backers.

The Russians know Tartus is in trouble. On December 3, commercial satellite imagery revealed that every major Russian warship known to operate from Tartus – three missile frigates, a diesel-electric attack submarine and two lightly-armed support ships – had unmoored from the port’s three large piers and sailed into the Med.

Losing Tartus would be catastrophic for Russian power projection in Southern Europe and North Africa. Realistically, the only way for the Kremlin to replace the vital shore infrastructure in Tartus is to regain access to the Med via the Bosporus.

But there’s almost no prospect of that happening while the war in Ukraine still rages. Russian president Vladimir Putin may soon face an unhappy choice: keep fighting in Ukraine but lose influence in the Mediterranean region; or sue for peace in Ukraine and open up access from the Black Sea to the Med.

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On November 30, Chinese social media posts showed what appeared to be half a dozen bodies left strewn across a busy road in Neijiang City in China’s Sichuan province, after another apparent attack using a car.

We will perhaps never know the truth of what happened, but since February, China has suffered one mass killing after another. In an especially horrific incident on the 11th of last month, a man drove his SUV on the exercise track of Zhuhai Stadium, killing 35 people and injuring 45 others. For decades, disaffected Chinese have resorted to violence as a first choice instead of the last one.

But the Communist Party’s reaction has been to censor news of incidents and prevent expressions of grief and mourning. These actions, by further bottling up emotions, are making a bad situation even worse.

CCP authorities are especially worried at the moment because the economy is suffering a prolonged downturn, the first since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

Further, the gloom in Chinese society is forcing collapse of birth rates. “In this country, to love your child is to never let him be born in the first place,” has become a popular sentiment.

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The Office of Management and Budget is a less well-known entity within the executive branch, but few are as critical for ensuring the implementation of the president’s agenda. President-elect Donald Trump has once again placed that awesome responsibility in Russ Vought’s hands.

OMB is not just the president’s budget division. While OMB oversees the structure and execution of the budget, it also has oversight powers over federal agencies and federal regulations to ensure the commands of the president, bestowed executive powers by the American people, are being followed.

In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Vought explained how OMB can use those powers to kill the deep state—a death by a thousand cuts.

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Russia’s strategy in executing its aggressive war against Ukraine, passing the 1,000-day mark last week (11/19(, puts the country’s economy, society, and armed forces under enormous pressure that Moscow’s militaristic propaganda cannot quite cover.

Relentless attacks, necessary for proving Russia’s control of the strategic initiative, produce Russian casualties so heavy that recruitment based on outlandish payments cannot compensate for the number of losses ( Mediazona, November 22). Public support for the war cannot be measured with any accuracy, but opinion polls show a steady increase in preferences for immediate peace talks (Levada.ru, November 6; The Moscow Times, November 22).

For Putin, escalation is the only way to alter the pattern of fast-progressing attrition.

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