It solely took a number of hours after Russia’s Vladimir Putin hailed his mobilization as a glowing success Friday for a torrent of humiliating reviews to emerge that counsel the warfare effort has been extra profitable in turning the nation towards him than defeating mythical Nazis in Ukraine.
The most staggering contradiction to the Russian president’s boastful claims got here maybe in Kazan, the place dozens of drafted troops had been captured on video late Friday berating navy management exterior a group level for the newly mobilized.
The indignant crowd complained of an absence of water, meals, and “rusty” rifles from the Seventies that one soldier mentioned had been too “dangerous” to even use, based on native shops. Spectacularly, the troops weren’t cowed by a navy officer who threatened to name in riot police.
“What kind of riot police are you trying to scare us with? We’ll call everyone we know right now, and they’ll come and we’ll pummel all of you and the riot police,” one protesting soldier yelled again.
The officer was compelled to retreat as the group of rioting troops chanted “cocksucker,” the video exhibits.
By Saturday, native authorities mentioned the problems cited by the troops had been “resolved,” based on Tatar-Inform. But outrage continued to bubble up elsewhere, together with in Voronezh, the place relations of drafted troops gathered exterior the native prosecutor’s workplace to movie a video enchantment to the governor pleading with him to rescue new troops from their very own command.
“On the very first day, they put [the draftees] on the frontline [in Luhansk]. The command left the battlefield and fled, saying they would soon return and bring the mobilized troops their things,” one member of the family mentioned in video shared by the unbiased outlet Verstka.
Within 40 minutes of being dumped on the battlefield, she mentioned, the management had didn’t return, shelling began, and “battles went on for three days.”
“They didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, and for three days held the line and didn’t run away unlike the command,” she mentioned.
“They tell us over the phone that our sons are alive and healthy, and even fulfilling their military duty. How the hell are they alive and healthy when they were all killed there?” the mom of one other soldier instructed Verstka.
More than 500 troops in that battalion had been subsequently killed after being deserted by the command, based on one of many surviving troopers who spoke to the outlet.
Aleksei Agafonov told Verstka his battalion initially included 570 males—however solely 29 made it out entire and one other 12 had been wounded after fierce preventing exterior Russian-occupied Makeyevka. The large losses had been confirmed by one other soldier who survived, recognized as Nikolai Voronin.
“There were a lot of dead, they were lying everywhere… Their arms and legs were torn off,” Voronin mentioned, including that the troops had been ordered to dig trenches earlier than all hell broke free and plenty of of them wound up “almost digging their own graves.”
“When it all started, the officers immediately ran away,” mentioned Agafonov.
“On TV they show that everything is beautiful, but in reality, here in the Luhansk region, they specifically toss mobilized troops onto the frontline, and when we left there, without seeing any officers, we went back and saw that on the third line it’s only contractees and volunteers, and draftees are on the front,” he mentioned
Putin, at a ceremony on Red Square on Friday, had tried to color a really completely different portrait of his mobilization effort, boasting that hundreds of males had opted to affix as volunteers, leading to a complete of 318,000 new troops, 49,000 of whom he mentioned had been already “fulfilling their duty” in navy ranks.
“The number of volunteers is not going down,” he mentioned in feedback carried by RIA Novosti.
“It’s a very large number of people [mobilized]. Families, mothers, fathers, children, wives are left… Of course, the state is doing everything in order to support them,” he said.
He went on to invoke the favored Russian slogan “we don’t leave our own behind,” claiming the phrase is “not empty words” however is “how everything is happening in reality.”
The most damning rebuke to that declare got here just some hours later from a person Ukrainian intelligence recognized as a soldier from Russia’s 752nd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment primarily based in occupied Donetsk—who mentioned troops there are fairly actually ordered to go away their very own behind so the federal government can keep away from paying their households the promised payouts.
The admission got here in what was described by Ukrainian authorities as an intercepted phone conversation between the Russian soldier and somebody again residence.
“They won’t allow for the 200s to be collected,” the purported soldier mentioned, utilizing Russian navy jargon for these killed in motion. “No body, no case. Maybe [they will think the person killed] has been captured and they can hold back money from the relatives and not fucking pay. Do you understand the idea?”
Asked if he personally had seen the deserted lifeless our bodies, he mentioned, “Of course.”
“They’re fucking laying everywhere and we can’t collect them,” he instructed his dumbstruck interlocutor, who requested in disbelief if the navy command treats solely the conscripts in such a fashion.
“It’s that way with everyone across the board,” he mentioned.
