This little video is truly incredible. I recommend everybody watch it several times, to let it sink in. It says so much about why Russia is losing this war. A short thread.
It shows a Ukrainian drone dropping a small grenade on a group of 11 Russian soldiers huddled sleeping in a (weakly) defensive dug-out pit, on the front line east of Bakhmut. What's amazing to watch is how sluggishly - if at all - the men react.
One man starts to get on his legs, but he merely shoves his way through other groggy men a few feet further from where the grenade hit and settles back to sleep. No one tries to change their overall situation before the next grenade hits. Three of the men don't move at all.
These men are suffering from moderate to severe hypothermia, when the body stops shivering and the mind goes into a stupor or even shuts down. They were probably laying huddled all night without proper clothing or bags. Night temperatures have been in the mid-high 30s F / 0-4 C
They're surely also sleep deprived. But above all, they're hopeless men in a hopeless situation. Whether convicts roped into a paramilitary force or recent conscripts to the regular army, these men have given complete control of their fates to people who treat them like garbage.
They have presumably been ordered to hold their position, and threatened with punishment or even execution if they fail. Yet they haven't been given the goods or training to stay warm.
Their situation can't be compared to the Soviet "cannon fodder" who charged at the Nazis, hopelessly for themselves but realistically making some small contribution to victory.
Today's Russian soldiers die like blind worms in a pit out of their commanders' sheer incompetence and their own failure to take responsibility for their own fates, achieving absolutely nothing.
And it's going to get a lot colder.
PS To the many people who are adding or substituting alcohol and/or lack of food to the causes: sure those are possible, even likely, but this much sluggishness or inaction among so many men has got to be hypothermia. Above all I'd rank despair.
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