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/ Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin warns that Russia's recent tactical successes around Pokrovsk and elsewhere are likely to have little effect on the overall trajectory of the war in Ukraine, unless Russia is willing to commit fully to the total defeat and dismemberment of Ukraine. ⬇️
2/ Girkin has issued a fresh letter from a B̵i̵r̵m̵i̵n̵g̵h̵a̵m̵ Kirovo-Chepetsk jail and (somehow, probably by text messages) has given an interview to the Russian news outlet RTVI, giving his current assessment of the state of the war.
3/ In a letter to a friend, he acknowledges that he may have been "a bit "overzealous" in my expressions about Our National Leader and was "more than usually" critical in my assessment of his (and his impeccable team's) performance both during the Special Military Operation…
1/ Russian soldiers fighting near Pokrovsk say they are eating bark to avoid starvation, while they face systematic extortion, embezzlement, and violence from their commanders, who send numerous men to their deaths and routinely execute others who are deemed inconvenient. ⬇️
2/ Vladimir Valerievich Dulyaninov, serving in the 6th Guards Tank Regiment (military unit 93992), has recorded a series of videos which his aunt has released in an apparent effort to pressure the Russian authorities to take action against the regiment's commanders.
3/ Dulyaninov has given a detailed account of the abuses in his unit, which reflect many similar accounts across the Russian army. He says that he is the commander of an assault platoon, but "I've lost many soldiers due to the reckless commanders, the rush and all that."
1/ The occupied Donbas is a garbage-filled, dysfunctional, and corrupt region infested by packs of man-eating dogs, according to a Russian warblogger. In a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance, she blames Ukraine and says that Russia is only in nominal control. ⬇️
2/ Journalist and warblogger Anastasia Kashevarova, who has frequently campaigned to improve the situation of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine, has posted a long denunciation of the situation in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, partly under Russian control since 2014.
3/ She asks: "Has Russia entered Donbas?"
"Russia has been repeatedly accused of occupying Donbas and Crimea, but let's finally figure out whether Russia is actually in Donbas. I, like the people of Donbas, are still waiting for Russia to finally enter and rule.
1/ A Russian soldier with a mental disability says that he was imprisoned in an open-air pit for 54 days to force him to join a stormtrooper squad. His experience highlights the Russian army's increasing use of men with disabling mental conditions as frontline troops. ⬇️
2/ Oleg Gennadievich Kalmykov of the 15th Motorised Rifle Regiment (military unit 31134) has recorded a video recounting how he was imprisoned for nearly two months in a zindan, a pit in the ground sealed with iron bars but otherwise open to the elements.
3/ Kalmykov says that his previous and current regiments are trying to override a diagnosis by military psychologists that he should be employed only in the rear area with no access to weapons, because he has an emotionally unstable personality disorder:
1/ A wounded Russian soldier was buried up to his neck in a so-called "tight pit" to 'remotivate' him to go on an assault. In a video, the man names his commanders, whom he says are running an extortion racket, and appeals for help from the military authorities. ⬇️
2/ The man complains: "They buried me in a pit for refusing to go and die on a combat mission, for a simple, stupid task where I could have died, they put me in a pit."
His cap reads: "To be a soldier means to live forever."
3/ The man is reported to be from the 1st Company of the 1st Battalion of the 108th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment (military unit 42091). He says that he had to refuse to go on a combat mission because of fragmentation injuries to his back.
1/ Russian soldiers are once again finding themselves being targeted by the hated military police for petty offences, including "driving with dirty tires" in the middle of the muddy season in Ukraine. "Are we fighting or just wanking?" asks one aggrieved soldier-blogger. ⬇️
2/ The military police have been the subject of complaints for years due to their rampant corruption, violent treatment of soldiers and generally obstructive attitudes.
3/ A fresh wave of shakedowns has been reported from the Russian rear areas in Ukraine, with soldiers being detained and sent to their likely deaths in stormtrooper squads as punishment for petty offences. 'Vault No. 8', a serving soldier and warblogger, reports: