Today's Ukraine update comes to us thanks to community member CyberMindGrrl, who last week highlighted a new Russian program aiming at recruiting 7 million citizens of the United States and Europe as immigrants to Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Not just any immigrants, mind you. The Moscow kleptocracy is specifically looking for "ideological immigration" from white European conservative-minded adventurers who are angry that their own countries give too many rights to LGBT+ citizens, who are angry about their nations' continued opposition of Russia, or who are simply angry at the presence of so many ethnic people in their home countries.
If you fit that criteria—for example, if you're an avid Tucker Carlson viewer—and don't mind moving to an authoritarian nation where authorities can and will kill or imprison you for speaking out against Putin, his allies, or his underlings, good news. There's a plot of barren Russian land out there just waiting for you to build the compound of your dreams.
Via Google translation:
As an incentive for resettlement to Russia, D. Gusev proposed to provide 10 hectares [25 acres] of land to settlers from the United States and Europe at the end of January, hoping that up to 7 million people could take advantage of this offer.
You'll note that the enticement there is 25 acres of what Russia has the most of: land. You'll note that there's no promise that your new plot of land will come with a shelter, or electricity, or an outhouse. We've been seeing more and more of late that highlights the lifestyles of most Russians who live outside the major cities, but conservative Russia-backers may or may not be aware that in modern day Russia, toilets are considered a luxury item.
There's a reason that not just toilets, stoves, dishwashers, and washing machines but even the most trivial of home appliances are being looted in bulk from Ukrainian homes "liberated" by Russia and delivered back to the homeland. It's because stealing those things is the only way for the average non-connected Russian to get them.
If you're a Tucker Carlson conservative who's looking to emigrate to a place that oppresses all the people you want them to, you'll have either dig your own poop-pit or import your own toilet. You'll have to import a dozen, in fact, because the odds of any one of those toilets reaching you through the theft-rampant national postal service is something close to zero.
There's a reason Russia is looking for new recruits—er, new "ideological immigrants."
The main argument in favor of such a policy is the high demographic losses that Russia suffered during the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as two waves of "anti-war" emigration.
We don't have a good handle on Russian pandemic deaths because, as in China, Florida, and other regimes run by lying autocrats, there's no incentive for the government to release accurate data. Worldometer puts Russian pandemic deaths at around 400,000; Reuters counted at least twice that many before stopping updates in July of last year. The real number is likely to be larger.
Russians fleeing the country to avoid conscription into the nation's ramshackle and incompetent military, however, is probably a more immediate problem. Between 500,000 and one million Russians have fled from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began. While many of those emigrants are trying to escape the harsh sanctions levied by the world against the Russian economy, it's Russian men of conscription age that are disproportionately looking to leave.
That's because nobody with a brain in their head wants to be marched to the Ukrainian frontlines with a museum-quality rifle, if that, and cold weather gear that consists of whatever their families can hastily scrounge up. Getting shipped to Ukraine as an untrained conscript is a death sentence; Russia has long ago been reduced to using officers and elite forces as cannon fodder for the war effort, so newly conscripted Russian nobodies can expect worse treatment than even that. Yeah, anyone with the smarts of a moist towelette has either left or is still trying to.
That leaves Russia with a big problem. They need a new influx of people who can be outsmarted by a moist towelette, and when it comes to a segment of the white, European or American population that would fit the bill even Russia knows where to look. The white nationalist movements of Europe and the United States are filled with those people, and they're just what Russia is looking for.
Russia isn't facing a population problem, in government minds, they're facing a "demographic" problem. With the flight of urban-area Russians, the country is becoming less "European" and, well, let's take a look. If you're a Tucker Carlson viewer or a white nationalist spouting "Great Replacement" theory, this will all sound uncannily familiar.
Since it is likely not possible to quickly increase the birth rate, immigration remains the only way to make up for demographic losses, that is, the resettlement of the population to Russia for permanent residence. But it obviously needs a selective approach based on ethnocultural intimacy with displaced persons. Mass immigration of the foreign cultural population from Asian CIS countries, which is still predominantly a form of labor, will lead, and in the most attractive regions for migrants already leads to a change in the ethnic structure of the population.
Yep, that's the "Great Replacement" theory, Russian nationalist edition; "European" Russians are dying or leaving, and "mass immigration" from Asian countries is changing the "ethnic structure" of the cobbled-together nation these floorboard-stealing nationalist chuckleheads have put themselves in charge of.
As a result, there is a deterioration in the criminal situation, an increase in the number of conflicts with the local population and representatives of other ethnic diasporas, and an aggravation of interethnic relations.
Damn, Tucker Carlsonski here is just letting it all hang out.
Roughly 200,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, by U.S. estimations, but the Putin government has gone to such lengths to hide the true body count that that approximation may still be substantially off the mark. Another million or two million Russians have either died in the pandemic or fled the country.
You can see, then, why the Russian government feels that gaining new bodies is a priority. The nation is running out of conscriptable men with no useful connections to the kleptocracy; it's time for some, literally, new blood.
All of that said, you will note that there is no thundering celebration of Russia's new 25-acres-and-no-mule recruitment drive among American and European white nationalist assholes. Tucker Carlson and his fellow Putinophiles love European nationalist movements that target immigrants and LGBT citizens, but there's been no mass migration of militant racists.
Russia, after all, has far stricter gun laws than the United States. Russia is a nation in which those that criticize the government—a white supremacist obsession—tend to fall out of apartment windows on a regular and now-escalating basis. Russia's nationalists aren't particularly welcoming of new white nationalist arrivals because Russian nationalism is explicitly contemptuous of those who aren't Russian.
It's possible that Tucker Carlson has the connections to get a toilet delivered to a barren plot of land somewhere in rural Russia, but your average Proud Boy or Oath Keeper doesn't have a prayer of it and even they know it.
It's a shame, really. Getting rid of up to 7 million of the most authoritarian-minded cranks in the United States and Europe sounds like a deal Western governments could all get behind; if Russia was proven to be serious in its plans to court our most militant and racist dregs, our own government could likely arrange for 7 million toilets to be delivered free of charge.
It doesn't look like 7 million people are going to take Russia up on that offer, though. It doesn't look like 7,000 will either. It's one thing to wave guns around and bellow about the indecencies to be found in library book collections; it's another to put yourself at the mercy of the sort of autocratic nationalist government you claim to want.
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