1/ What's life like for newly-mobilised Russian troops in their barracks and temporary accomodation? Terrible, from all accounts, with no heating, no food, no sleeping bags, no hot water, no toilets, freezing tents, bedbug-infested mattresses and no training. 🧵 follows. 
2/ The independent Russian media outlet Verstka reports on the experiences of mobilised men from Ufa and Chelyabinsk, two major cities in west-central Russia. The family of one mobilised man named Semyon spent about 40,000 rubles ($625) to equip him for the war.
3/ Semyon and others from the region were sent to a training centre in Elani near Yekaterinburg. To his shock, there were not enough beds and no food at all. He told his family that the only food the mobilised men had was what they had brought with them.
4/ Those with more food were sharing with the hungry. "For two days no dry rations were given, not even a piece of bread each. It doesn't make sense," Semyon said. They were subsequently taken to Rostov, where there was still no food.
5/ The men were told they would not be getting any training and would be sent straight to Luhansk in Ukraine. Semyon asked his superiors for tactical gloves and a hunting knife. The knives given to the soldiers turned out to be blunt.
6/ Two days later they were taken to Luhansk, where again there was no food. Semyon contacted his relatives to ask them to send him 4,000 rubles ($63) to buy food for himself.
7/ Another soldier ended up in another military camp near the village of Popovka in Saratov region. On the first day, all the mobilised men were made to stand for several hours on the parade ground in the pouring rain while the commanders decided what to do with them.
8/ The wet soldiers were assigned to barracks, but there were no stoves so the men could not dry their clothes and walked around in wet clothes. There were no showers, baths or hot water either. The barracks toilets also did not work.
9/ Sleeping bags were not provided and the men slept on old, dirty mattresses infested with bedbugs.
10/ At another mobilisation camp at Dubki in Saratov region, the men were at least given three meals a day on most days. The exception was on days when the new soldiers were being assigned to their units. On such days they stand for many hours on the parade ground and skip lunch.
11/ According to one soldier from Ufa in Bashkortostan, commanders were only interested in three military specialities – likely indicative of where the Russian army is facing manpower shortages – sappers, signallers and gunners.
12/ The mobilised men reportedly sleep on mattresses in their outer clothing, as no one was given sleeping bags. Thirty people are housed in each room. There are no showers, baths or hot water, so the men wash themselves with cold water.
13/ In another mobilisation camp in Tatarstan, the men say they are living outdoors in large army tents. They were not given sleeping bags or mattresses. The men heat a small potbelly stove and sleep in outerwear on the wooden floor.
14/ Very similar conditions are visible in this video from a mobilisation camp in Yugra, near Omsk. The narrator says that they have been given nothing, including uniforms and mattresses, so they are having to steal from others to survive.
https://twitter.com/VolodyaTretyak/status/1580683179177824256
16/ The men are receiving little or no training. Semyon from Chelyabinsk was sent immediately to Luhansk without any training. Maria from Ufa says that her husband's group "are just wasting time. They walk around the territory of the unit, rest. They didn't get any guidance."
17/ The men say they are in the dark about their future. A group from Bashkortostan was given assault rifles but not taught how to use them, and they do not know when or whether they will be trained: "No one explains anything to them", says the wife of one.
18/ One wife posted a complaint on the social media page of the head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, that the men were being treated badly. She was told that she was “whining” and “crying”. The authorities say the mobilised are "provided with everything necessary".
19/ (And remember, all of this is likely to be far better than what they'll experience in the trenches in the Ukrainian winter.)
/end
Source:
verstka.media/mobilizovannye…
/end
Source:
verstka.media/mobilizovannye…
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