1/ MEMOIRS OF A MOBIK, PART 3: 'Ukol', a Russian soldier who is a rare survivor of the original September 2022 mobilisation, continues his recollections of his service on the front lines in Ukraine. He speaks of his experiences as a medical orderly under Ukrainian bombardment. ⬇️
2/ Part 1, covering his initial mobilisation and transportation to Ukraine, is here:
3/ Part 2, in which he describes his experience of surviving 'meat assaults' against Ukrainian positions, is here:
4/ At this time, being a frontline medic was dangerous, but not as risky as it is now with constant drone surveillance. Ukol says that from November 2022 to Spring 2024 he treated 285 seriously wounded people with traumatic amputations or wounds to major organs.
5/ As for the lightly to moderately wounded, he dealt with "about 2,000 people. I'm not kidding, my average workday from late autumn 2022 to late spring 2024 consisted of 6-8 trips to provide assistance and evacuation. I walked 30-40 kilometres [per day]."
6/ "I lost most of my muscle mass on such activity - on a starvation diet and constant overexertion..."
By the time the spring thaw came in 2023 after a bitterly cold winter, morale was low among the poorly equipped soldiers and few wanted to risk themselves for the wounded.
7/ Ukol shows a photo of six Russian soldiers from his unit, standing in ankle-deep mud.
8/ "Only one of them has a bulletproof vest and a helmet, the rest are just in winter uniform, mostly "digital", but one in the photo was wearing a National Guard pea coat in the "moss" pattern.
9/ "The guys had almost no pouches for magazines and grenades, in their hands were automatic without tuning, with one magazine [each]. And that's it. Everyone's faces are extremely gloomy and sad."
Their mood was not improved by the regular bombardments they faced.
10/ "Once, the Ukies were pounding our position all day. It was scary to crawl out to the toilet. The last one (as it turned out) fired a 155 mm and it fell about 10 meters from my shelter.
11/ "I managed to close the door and take a step down the stairs, when I was knocked off my feet by the blast wave and spread out on the floor.
I sat down by the wall (there was no one else in the dugout except me). And for two hours I just stared stupidly ahead.
12/ "I lost my presence of mind and waited for the next shell, which, as it seemed to me, was supposed to be the last one. But it didn’t arrive, and I slid down the wall to my side and forgot myself in a nightmare, like a homeless person."
13/ His unit, which he calls the "Separate Death Rifle Brigade", was poorly led by its officers – who were also mobilised men – and suffered many casualties. "Our [commander] was just an alcoholic. I was invited to give him an IV drip."
14/ "He was forgiven a lot, but in the end he went overboard with the transfer of personnel to meat. For which he was fired.
They still remember him in the brigade. During one of my vacations, I had to go to the deployment point.
15/ "And there we have a whole bunch of cripples without legs and arms, who are either waiting for dismissal or continue serving because the army does not want to let them go so easily. And so at the checkpoint there is a detail of an officer and a couple of conscripts.
16/ "And there is a dog hanging around with them. So. The dog was nicknamed "Brigade Commander".
The mobiks had joined the brigade in the fall of 2022 to replace the regular soldiers, who had been wiped out during the initial part of the invasion.
17/ By the fall of 2023, most of the mobiks had been wiped out as well. They were replaced with new contract soldiers. Those were wiped out in turn during 2024, so the brigade is now on its "third or fourth" round of regeneration.
18/ They were not all killed, Ukol says, but "somewhere around February 2023, they stopped returning the wounded back to the brigade after recovery. Instead, we were distributed among units of the formation as a whole, and to other armies, and divisions too."
19/ "Therefore, for the brigade, people were lost even as a result of moderate injuries."
TO BE CONTINUED: how captured Ukrainians, including female soldiers, were tortured and killed, and how Ukol's frontline service came to an end
Part 4 is here:
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