Gordon Chang

So most of the people that are going to be financially incentivized have probably already signed up.

Because, again, the bonuses have just skyrocketed.

There comes a point when there's not that much of a difference kind of inside your brain when you're doing a calculus between a million rubles and one point one million rubles.

So that's one thing that's happening.

Another kind of factor to consider here is how is the Kremlin paying for all of those financial incentives?

Right.

We are increasingly getting reports that the regions are really struggling.

The regional budgets are struggling.

And so that's something to consider here.

I mean, something we're really looking at here at the Institute for the Study of War is, again, his kind of theory of victory.

So he's given a couple of public statements in the past couple of years that have really indicated that his theory of victory is predicated on a couple of assumptions, right?

One, Russia can outlast Ukraine's willingness and ability to fight back.

Russia can outlast the West's willingness to support Ukraine, right?

And that Russia can just keep making these very small, very gradual, but all over the front line advances that will be able to prevent the Ukrainians from conducting any sort of counteroffensive.

So Putin seems pretty satisfied, even if this war continues at the kind of very slow pace.

And it has been going on for a couple of years now at this point.

And so something we're really looking at is if he kind of gets backed into a corner between he can no longer maintain those advances, again, even if they're slow, and the Ukrainians are pushing back.

And then the other thing that we're really thinking might go into this calculus

is his force generation problems that are starting to emerge right so his recruitment rate is going down the ukrainians are inflicting more and more casualties on the russians um is he going to come to a decision point where he's you know up against a fork in the road and he has to pick what to do either continue how things are going um where he's not able to replace his losses on the battlefield and therefore risking um sustaining the tempo of his attacks or does he have to conduct another

or maybe involuntary partial mobilization.