1/ Two more videos of unhappy mobilised Russian soldiers in the field in Ukraine (this is becoming quite a genre now) highlight issues that have been seen several times before: they're being deployed without ammunition, food, water, clear orders or even tents to sleep in. ⬇️
2/ Men of the 423rd Guards Yampolsky Motor Rifle Regiment, who appear to have been deployed to eastern Ukraine (possibly somewhere around Lyman, judging from the terrain), complain:
3/ "We are standing on the front line, we have no ammo, no grenades, no food, no water... Here is the front line, we were sent here without training, without everything."
4/ They had to buy their own uniforms and have no logistics: "our support is what we ourselves were able to get" from another location, probably a nearby village, "5 km there, 5 km back".
5/ They have no clear orders, they don't know where the enemy are, and there is "no communication at all" with the rest of the Russian army.
6/ They say that "we got fucked everywhere". They are under "constant shelling, tonight [we have] 8 killed, 3 wounded", and they lost a tank.
"It's fucking shit," one of them says bitterly, "hello, Russian army."
"It's fucking shit," one of them says bitterly, "hello, Russian army."
7/ In this second video, men from Bashkortostan who have been deployed to the south in the Zaporizhzhia region complain of very similar problems. They say they were "sent to the fields, where people have no water, nothing to drink, no food."
8/ "Why should they buy everything at their own expense? They go to the nearest village themselves, buy all the food themselves, but there is no supply [from the army]."
9/ The men "sleep in hangars, people sleep naked [i.e. without tents] in fields, people are sick."
"How long can it go on?", one man asks.
"How long can it go on?", one man asks.
10/ And note, once again: it's not even winter yet.
Multiple videos from different parts of Ukraine are all showing the same kind of problems: lack of logistics, lack of communications, lack of orders. What is going wrong? A few thoughts:
Multiple videos from different parts of Ukraine are all showing the same kind of problems: lack of logistics, lack of communications, lack of orders. What is going wrong? A few thoughts:
11/ 1️⃣ Russian commanders may have made a deliberate decision to deprioritise supplying the mobiks, saving scarce supplies for the better trained and more valuable professional troops. This would be ruthless but rational.
12/ 2️⃣ The Russian logistics system has broken down under the stress of having thousands more men to feed and supply, and simply can't cope with the extra demand. There's clear evidence from earlier in the war that it was already struggling to cope (as @TrentTelenko has noted).
13/ 3️⃣ Heavy losses of trucks and Ukrainian bombardment of supply routes has corroded the Russian logistics chain (as @WarintheFuture might put it), making it increasingly dysfunctional and ineffective.
14/ I have no idea which of these explanations might be true – it could be any, all, or some combination – but it suggests that the Russian army is in a very bad way as winter approaches. I wouldn't be surprised if reports of starvation emerge in a few months' time.
15/ While it's not clear how typical these reports are, it also suggests that despite the noise around mobilisation, the mobiks are not likely to be much use in combat. Hungry, demoralised, untrained men who don't even have ammunition aren't likely to offer much resistance. /end
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