I was watching cable news coverage of the war in Ukraine and they were discussing the pullback of Russian troops from Kiev, finding bodies of civilians murdered by the Russians. One Ukrainian lamented why the Russians did not just take the food and washing machine…why did they have to kill women and children?

When I wrote that Russian troops will stab you in the chest, rape your daughter, steal everything not nailed down of value and then celebrate with vodka, I was not being cute or flip. That is Russian army standard operating procedure. The Germans committed atrocities in their invasion of Russia, Operation Barbarossa, in World War II and the Russians have been paying the world back ever since. I thought that it was odd the Ukrainian brought up them taking the washing machine in the cable news report and then I read what that was about in the VEA Odessa Brokers newsletter written by Victor Korbobko.

He was commenting on how ineffective that the Western sanctions will be on the many Russians who have such a low standard of living in Russia that the sanctions change little for them. They are used to inflation.

Russian troops are not the cream of the crop. The Russian education system collapsed along with the Soviet Union and there is a segment of Russian demographic population that is very poorly educated. The U.S. military would never accept some of the idiots that are conscripted or “volunteer” for the Russian military. We found out how tough that it was to get good Afghan soldiers when they first had to teach them to read as part of their boot camp. They are also not treated well in the Russian army. They are poorly trained, often abused by their non-commissioned corps, which is what makes an army function or not. Many of the officers in the Russian army survive off the graft. The breakdown of their chain of command was evident in the failed invasion of Ukraine. What Russia did was let loose a bunch of low-life thugs on the Ukraine population.

These troops would write home about how shocked that they were over the Ukraine high relative standard of living. The houses that they pillaged for supplies had TVs and computers as well as you guessed it “washing machines”. The washing machine became the prize for Mom or the girlfriend back home who would be sure that they were some kind of war heroes if they could bring back a washing machine from Ukraine.

Victor writes, if you ask Moscow other big city residents, is living as “normal”. Yes, inflation is a bit high, sure someone lost a job, but generally speaking it is all in order. In the depths of Russia – people existed in poverty already before and that’s why Russian soldiers are so excited (judging from intercepted conversations) and telling their mothers and girlfriends that “Ukrainian houses we rob are really rich places! We take TV, computer, foreign made washing machine etc….and we would have not earned to have all that in Russia!”

Victor goes on, “So, what the change is? McDonalds continue to work as franchise outfits are yet performing under the rand in Russia. At least 4-5 big and known foreign banks continue to transact USD and EUR into Russia without interruptions; gas and oil is moving for export; grains are being shipped and as I said ABC’s are shopping it, shielding their actions with “taking care about feeding the world“. People in Russian villages continue to bear the burden of corruption and now the war at their shoulders and there are places 100-150 km away from big cities where no gas is in the villages, people exist on $120 a month equivalent and there is one school for 2-3 villages (and indeed a church in every village) where teachers rotate and classes are maximum 4-5 and that’s it. So, these people are used to suffer. Their peaceful existence is not far from war-time existence, as they are in poverty already and indeed ignorance is their entire lifestyle. Thus, to expect that Russia falls fast is a mistake. It has an expertise of destructing itself for years.”

I think that is the kind of perspective that you only get from someone living there experiencing it.

The Russian troops think that they are on a scavenger hunt pillaging homes of the ‘wealthy’ in Ukraine leaving behind death and destruction. Wonder if they told Mom in Moscow how they killed the kids in Ukraine? If she got the washing machine, she would probably not care how they got it. Such a good boy.

Victor is not entirely pleased with what he calls “the non-collective West.” He says that many EU nations just want this war over with so that things can go back “to normal” for them, buying their oil/gas from Russia. He thinks that the non-collective West is being short-sighted.

“And judging now the first defeat of Russia in this war, the non-collective West is considering all possible further effects, while lack of action provides Russia with the belief that Ukraine is indeed, a Russian Somaliland and cannot exist as a functional, independent and recognized state. The wishful is: “if we can’t eat it all today, we bite what we can and we make as much damage as possible to the rest of yet independent Ukraine so they can’t recover fast. And while the West will be busy with funding Ukraine for rebuild and thinking of taking or not, what’s left after this war into EU, we shall find the way how to strike again as we learnt the first war mistakes”.

Russia attacked Odessa’s fuel refinery and Victor expects them to hit port silos and infrastructure destroying that, too. The port is currently blockaded by “Russian pirates.” What grain that is getting out of Ukraine does so through Romania, but the Romanian port is clogged and there is a logistics snarl getting there. Sovecon says that some Ukraine wheat demand is shifting to Russia. You can imagine how the Odessa brokers feel about that. There is no appetite in the non-collective West to block Russian grain/oil/gas exports even though that is how Putin is financing his death and destruction. Russia is stealing Ukraine’s wheat market and washing machines and the non-collective West still doing business with Russia is too often complicit with the thieves.