1/ When COVID meets mobilisation: newly mobilised Russian soldiers attached to the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division have contracted COVID-19 en masse and are now locked in a train for quarantine, without medical care or ventilation. Translation follows: ⬇️
2/ "We are mobilised military personnel of the Taman Division [the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division], called up on 26 September 2022. Receiving our papers on the following morning, we were deprived of the opportunity to properly equip ourselves, even at our own expense.
3/ Directly on joining the Taman Division we received old uniforms and things like bags. On the 29th we joined the unit in which we are still. After boarding [our train], our unit was sent to the south of Russia, where it stayed for a few days without a definite objective.
4/ At the moment, we are moving back to the north. From the first days, a difficult situation with acute respiratory diseases arose in our unit.
5/ Since we were forced to sleep on the floor and wait for our departure at the station for more than 10 hours, at the moment there are far more sick personnel than healthy ones. I would say that absolutely everyone is sick.
6/ Personally I lost my [sense of] taste and smell. The same symptoms can be detected in others, which allows us to assume a coronavirus infection. There is no medical care in the unit. No one is going to treat us.
7/ Among us are people with chronic diseases, whom the military commands have mobilised without any [medical] examination. In part, we have witnessed cases of heart attacks. From our own sources, it is known that our unit has decided to isolate for a two-week quarantine.
8/ The quarantine is in the same train, where the temperature of the air in the carriage is so high that sweat is pouring from us. Although there is some ventilation at the gangway connectors [between the carriages].
9/ In a week of being on this train, we have never seen either the bosses nor the doctors. We do not want to suffer any serious injury, we are not going to sit in this infected carriage.
10/ If our commanders attack us, we will give our problems to the public without disclosure of any confidential information."
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1/ Telegram is deeply embedded into Russian military units' internal communications, providing functionality that MAX, the Russian government's authorised app, doesn't have. A commentary highlights the vast gap that is being opened up by the government's blocking of Telegram. ⬇️
2/ The Two Majors Charitable Foundation writes that without Telegram, information exchange, skills transfer, and moral mobilisation work within the Russian army will be crippled:
3/ "I'd really like to add that for a long time, we've been gathering specialized groups in closed chats, including those focused on engineering and UAVs, to share experiences and build a knowledge base. Almost everyone there is a frontline engineer.
1/ Russia's Federal Customs Service is seeking to prosecute Russian volunteers who are importing reconnaissance drones from China to give to frontline troops. It's the latest chapter in a saga of bureaucratic obstruction that is blocking vital supplies to the Russian army. ⬇️
2/ Much of the army's equipment, and many of its drones, are purchased with private money by volunteer supporters or the soldiers themselves. High-tech equipment such as drones and communications equipment is purchased in China or Central Asia and imported into Russia.
3/ However, the Federal Customs Service has been a major blocker. Increased customs checks on the borders have meant that cargo trucks have suffered delays of days or even weeks, drastically slowing the provision of essential supplies for the Russian army.
1/ Leaked casualty figures from an elite Russian special forces brigade indicate that it has suffered huge losses in Ukraine, equivalent to more than half of its entire roster of personnel. Scores of men are listed as being 'unaccounted for', in other words having deserted. ⬇️
2/ The 10th Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade (military unit 51532) is a special forces (spetsnaz) unit under the GRU. It is a 2002 refoundation by Russia of a Soviet-era spetsnaz unit that, ironically, passed to Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
3/ Since the invasion of February 2022, the brigade has been fighting on the Kherson front, which has seen constant and extremely bloody fighting over the islands in the Dnipro river and delta. Russian sources have reported very high casualties.
1/ Russian warbloggers are continuing to provide examples of how Telegram is used for frontline battlefield communications, to refute the claim of presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov that such a thing is "not possible to imagine". ⬇️
2/ Platon Mamadov provides two detailed examples:
"Example number one:
Aerial reconnaissance of Unit N spotted a Ukrainian self-propelled gun in a shelter in the middle of town N."
3/ "Five minutes after the discovery, the target's coordinates and a detailed video were uploaded to a special secret chat group read by all drone operators, scouts, and artillerymen in that sector of the front.
1/ The Russian army faces a crisis with obtaining aid for its soldiers, who are dependent on volunteers to provide them with everything from socks to Starlink terminals. Russian warbloggers say that the blocking of Telegram will wreck voluntary assistance efforts. ⬇️
2/ 'It's time ZOV to go home' writes:
"Since 2022, Telegram has become the primary source of funds for the front. Numerous units and volunteers have created their own channels."
3/ "This has enabled us to address a colossal number of issues that needed to be addressed right then and there. It's impossible otherwise: when a fundraising campaign begins, it means the fundraising item was needed yesterday, and there's no time to waste.
1/ Russian soldiers overwhelmingly prefer to use Telegram for tactical communications despite the Russian army having its own dedicated military messengers. The reason isn't complex – the military's own alternatives are unreliable and difficult to use. ⬇️
2/ 'Vault No. 8' explains the problem:
"The Telegram slowdown is particularly nasty because Telegram is used for communication on the front lines.
Military messengers have been around since I wrote about this, but... Guess what you have to do to get a firmware-ready smartphone?
3/ "That's right! Buy it [with your own money] and send it in for a firmware update. On top of that, one of the military messengers periodically crashes like crazy, and the phone has to be sent in for a [periodic] firmware update, which takes at least a couple of weeks.