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/ The Russian government has finally published a set of standards for protecting fixed structures from the threat of UAVs, two and a half years into a war which has seen numerous Russian sites targeted by Ukrainian attacks. However, it is being seen as mere bureaucracy. ⬇️
2/ The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel has published extracts from a leaked set of standards for "protective enclosing structures against unmanned aerial vehicles". It is the product of joint work by various Russian state corporations, research institutions and ministries.
3/ The document sets out data on types of UAVs (which it divides into "small", "light" and "medium", as well as differentiating between kamikaze drones and those acting as bombers), and calculations of explosive and fragmentation loads.
1/ Russian commanders are throwing away their troops in performative assaults to impress their superiors, according to an angry Russian milblogger. His commentary highlights a persistent contributing factor to Russia's very high casualty figures. ⬇️
2/ Russian commentators have repeatedly described the Russian army's pattern of institutionalised lying, including staged training, fake manpower figures, and false claims of having captured targets, which result in bloody attempts to make the claims real.
3/ The ultranationalist journalist Vladislav Shurygin complained earlier this year that "hundreds of Russian men are driven forward to [their own] slaughter, so that the boss who reports the capture, who has already drilled a hole for the medal on his uniform, can cover his ass!"
1/ Russian conscripts captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region and subsequently freed in prisoner exchanges are being forced to sign military contracts under threat of beatings and prosecutions of themselves and their families, according to relatives. ⬇️
2/ Members of the Russian 488th Mobilised Rifle Regiment were captured en masse by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region in August 2024. It was reported that they were shot at by Chechen 'barrier troops' trying to prevent their surrender.
3/ Around 100 men from the regiment were captured in a single location, marking one of the biggest surrenders of Russians in the Ukraine war. It seems likely that this has marked them out for punitive treatment when they were returned to Russia.
1/ Recent news that sailors from the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov have been sent to fight in Ukraine as infantry, due to a shortage of personnel, highlights how Russia has been expending specialists of all kinds to fill gaps. ⬇️
2/ This has been happening for some time – there have been reports of specialists such as UAV operators, artillerymen, nuclear missile troops and even doctors being pressed into service as stormtroopers to participate in frequently bloody assaults.
3/ The Russian milblogger Roman Alekhin blames generals for lying about troop numbers and misleading the high command about the true state of affairs at the front. He says that rather than admit the truth, they are essentially throwing in any specialist they can get hold of.
1/ A Russian cannibal who killed a Tajik migrant, cut out his heart, and videoed himself frying it with vegetables and eating it, has been allowed to go home to recover from injuries received fighting in Ukraine. He is the latest in a series of cannibals to fight in the war. ⬇️
2/ Dmitry Malyshev was one of a group of three friends who, in December 2013, decided to become bandits in their home district in the Volgograd region. They planned to attack police officers and steal their weapons and ammunition for subsequent attacks.
3/ The plan did not work because they mistimed their attack on a police patrol. Instead, they shot up two men in a car that came along later, but that didn't work either: the car crashed, rolled, and was too badly damaged to steal. The bodies were not discovered for two weeks.
1/ A high-ranking officer of the Russian aerospace forces (VKS) is reported to have died by suicide in the Moscow region. He is said to have despaired of the bad working conditions and "criminal orders of the commanders" in the VKS Communications Centre. ⬇️
2/ Yuri Annenkov, the head of the 678th Communications Centre of the Aerospace Defense Force, is reported by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel to have taken his own life at the end of last week in a forest belt in Balashikha, just east of Moscow.
3/ The channel reports: "Three empty bottles of vodka and empty pill packages were found next to the body, and at home, relatives found a suicide note in which the commander complains of despair and says goodbye."