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/ A Russian forensic specialist was sent to Ukraine and made a tank platoon commander with no previous experience and little training. After being seriously injured and seeing many abuses perpetrated by officers, he deserted and has since told his story. ⬇️
2/ Vyacheslav Astakhov originally trained in criminology and joined the Russian police in the 2010s, but quit after four years after he "realised that the people there were rotten from top to bottom". This left him with serious financial problems, so he joined the Russian Army.
3/ He obtained a posting to the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, where soldiers can attract double pay becausxe of the difficult conditions. His remote posting was not immediately affected by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
1/ @joshrogin is right to point out below the worthlessness of Putin's promise of “legislative enshrinement” in Russia not to violate the sovereignty of any European country. Not least because Russia's criminal code *already* bans waging aggressive war. ⬇️
2/ The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contains a chapter on "Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind". Articles 353 and 356 deserve to be reviewed in the light of Putin's latest promises, as they ban what Russia has been doing in Ukraine over the last 3 years.
3/ Article 353 provides that:
"1. Planning, preparing, or unleashing an aggressive war shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of seven to fifteen years.
2. Waging an aggressive war shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of 10 to 20 years"
1/ Russian warbloggers are pronouncing themselves highly satisfied with the outcome of Friday's summit. They praise it as "perfect" and look forward to a future in which the world is carved up between the US, Russia, China and India. ⬇️
2/ AGDChan is effusive, comparing Putin to Tsar Alexander III, who redefined the European security environment in the 19th century with the Franco-Russian alliance that brought Russia into the First World War 20 years after his death:
3/ “I did not count on such a good result... Well, I congratulate all of us on the perfect summit. It was grandiose. To win everything and lose nothing, only Alexander III could do that. It is impossible to imagine how difficult it was, almost impossible for Putin. But he did it.
1/ The few hundred surviving residents of the largely destroyed Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, captured by Russia in February 2024, are finding that life under Russian rule offers few comforts. They say they are facing "sabotage and abuse". ⬇️ ⬇️
2/ Prior to the war, Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, had a population of about 31,000 people. Only 914 inhabitants were reported to still be remaining shortly before it fell to Russian forces. Most are likely to be old people and pro-Russian sympathisers who did not want to leave.
3/ A private Telegram channel, 'Avdiivka Rollcall', complains about the miserable conditions that the inhabitants are enduring now that Russia is in control. Perhaps not surprisingly, few of the promised benefits have arrived, despite propaganda claims to the contrary:
1/ Even as Vladimir Putin appears to be envisaging the war in Ukraine continuing indefinitely, Russian soldiers have had enough. An online poll suggests that many of the soldiers on the front line do not want to fight on to a decisive Russian victory. ⬇️
2/ The outspokenly pro-war 'Southern Front' Telegram channel has recently asked its readers: "Would you like the war to end soon, without the complete defeat of the Kyiv junta?" The results are perhaps not what was expected:
1/ Russia's police state is running out of police. Low salaries and poor working conditions have prompted so many to leave for better-paid army or war industry jobs that basic police services are falling apart and educational requirements for new recruits are being eliminated. ⬇️
2/ Russia's law enforcement agencies, which come under the Interior Ministry, have been experiencing an increasingly severe manpower crisis. In some regions, the police are as much as 50% under strength. Many Russian warbloggers have been discussing the reasons for the crisis.
3/ This has been prompted by a report from the Ural Mash Telegram channel which has aroused outrage in Russia. Yekaterinburg police failed to detain an alleged fraudster who was accused of stealing a million rubles ($12,500), because no police were available to make an arrest: