Mobilisation in the Russian Federation is a sad sight. Hundreds of thousands of people uprooted from their homes and driven, perhaps, to their deaths – the ruins of their former lives left behind. Ahead lies destruction, and the mobilised soldiers are both the instruments and, to a lesser extent, the victims of it.
Yet while this picture is almost universal – there have always been wars – in Russia it always looks rougher, more sentimental. Downcast peasants and boys herded into some dirty square in front of an unremarkable train station, all wearing similar clothes and similar expressions on their faces as a sentimental tune plays in the background.
The brute force of the Russian state doesn’t only hit you where it hurts, it does not recognise human life as such, which is why the current authorities have no doubts, no regrets. The Russian state, as if following Foucault’s mantra of ‘discipline and punish’, does not see any value in its current object of discipline and punishment, the mobilised soldier.
