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Nov 12 17 tweets 4 min read
1/ Only four out of 91 mobilised Russians lasted a week under HIMARS and shell fire on the front line in eastern Ukraine. They were told by their colonel that their "equipment is worth its weight in gold, and we will recruit new ones instead of you". ⬇️ Image
2/ The independent Russian news outlet Astra reports that the men were sent to recapture the village of Nevs'ke, about 30 km south-west of Svatove. This happened on 25 October, two days after the Ukrainians took it with heavy reported Russian casualties.
3/ Astra reports:

"The mobilized men of the 35th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade from Aleysk, Altai Krai, who were drafted in late September, have been sent to the front line after two weeks of "useless" training.
4/ On 25 October they were sent to attack the village of Nevs'ke, having been given seven infantry fighting vehicles, of which only two started up on their own, "the rest had to be pushed". Image
5/ On the very first day, two of the three platoons were ambushed and suffered casualties, one of the mobilised men told Astra. The next day they "came across a more prepared ambush, where we were greeted by both equipment and more professional military men."
6/ The commander told them that "they shouldn't be here" [on the front line] and gave the order to retreat. “As the president said, the mobilised will either be in the rear zone or on the 4rd line of defense.
7/ We found videos on the Internet with Putin's words about this,” says a mobilised man.

About 60 conscripts out of 91, from our interlocutor's company, retreated to Svatove (the rest stayed at the front line).
8/ There, in Svatove, they say they were met by the deputy commander of the Central Military District, who gave them two houses to sleep in and said he would "deal with them".
9/ After that, for eight days, "different ranks – from majors to generals – came to the people who refused to return to the front line and intimidated them by saying that "we have only one choice: ...
10/ to go to the front line, because there is no time to send you to the prosecutor's office".
11/ From one of the military commanders, the mobilised heard "No man - no problems." “That is, if we die, it will be easier for them." The colonel tells us: “Our equipment is worth its weight in gold, and instead of you we will recruit new ones.”
12/ Now the mobilised are in the rear in Luhansk oblast and are demanding that a meeting with the military prosecutor be arranged for them.
13/ "They do not send the military prosecutor's office to us, they just intimidate us. They promise to give us a medical examination and training and send us back because we will be supposedly 'ready'."
14/ "Salaries are also calculated differently [from how they should be]. I only got a third of my salary. Some have loans, which they promised to freeze, but they also did not provide credit holidays," says the Astra interlocutor.
15/ The mobilised are also afraid to talk about it openly because "yesterday guys from our battalion recorded a video message, and today the military police arrived, handcuffed them in front of everyone and took them away."
16/ Those from the company that remained at the front line (about 25 people) "stayed there in the trenches for a week, keeping their heads down." Their commander was killed by mortar fire, "they did not know what to do and also decided to retreat."
17/ After that, in the nearest settlement where they reached, the remnants of the company, along with other soldiers, came under HIMARS fire. According to the mobilised man, four people survived from the company. /end

Source:
t.me/astrapress/156…

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More from @ChrisO_wiki

Nov 11
1/ Russia's retreat from Kherson marks another major milestone besides the Ukrainian recapture of the city: Ukraine has now retaken half of all the territory originally captured by Russia. The independent Russian Agency News outlet has been doing the sums.
2/ After the retreat of the Russian army from the right bank of the Dnipro, including from Kherson, the territory occupied by Russia since the beginning of the war will shrink by almost 4,900 square kilometers, the Agency's calculations show.
3/ Details. All in all, since the beginning of autumn, taking into account retreats from Kharkiv Region and Liman, Russia has lost 17,900 sq km of captured territory.
Read 8 tweets
Nov 11
1/ Wives and mothers of mobilised Russian soldiers have mounted a raid into the war zone to find and rescue their men from the Russian army. They found them sitting in fields without food. The army found the men at the same time and took them to be detained in a basement. ⬇️ Image
2/ As reported earlier (see below), relatives of the mobilised have been trying to get the Russian authorities to bring their men home. The men are poorly or not at all trained and lack weapons, ammunition and provisions. Many have become casualties.
3/ A group of wives and mothers from Kursk appealed to the city authorities earlier this week to help their men, complaining that their commander was throwing them into the front line "like meat". The authorities were not helpful.
Read 21 tweets
Nov 11
1/ One of the biggest mysteries of this war, at least to me, is why the Russians don't seem to have undertaken any kind of hearts and minds efforts. They undermined their own occupation with relentless looting and brutality.
2/ What makes this even crazier is that the people treated this way are - officially at least - supposed to be Russian citizens! It also completely contradicts the rhetoric of liberation rather than hostile occupation. These weren't Afghans, they were 'fellow Russians'.
3/ I think the root cause of this is likely to be that the Russians originally intended to invade, execute a quick regime change, grab the whole of the Donbas and leave, without the extra difficulty and cost of a large-scale occupation. (Parallels with Iraq?)
Read 5 tweets
Nov 11
1/ Following up on yesterday's thread about the Russian army detaining dozens of its own mobilised soldiers in basement prisons for refusing to fight (see below), relatives of the detained have reportedly been trying to rescue them by themselves.
2/ The independent ASTRA news outlet reports that relatives of the imprisoned mobiks travelled to Zaitseve, just across the border from Russia's Belgorod oblast, to try to find and return their men from the basement where they are being detained. Image
3/ However, according to one relative, "There is a roadblock with armed men and they were not allowed in. They said they would only enter the village with military IDs." The exact location of the basement-prison in the village is not known.
Read 18 tweets
Nov 10
1/ Relatives of mobilised men from Vologda have issued an appeal in a video and on VK for their men to be returned from a "bloody meat grinder" in Ukraine where they were bombed and shelled by both the Ukrainians and their own side. Thread ⬇️
2/ The relatives' statement on VK says:

"We relatives of those mobilised in Vologda are appealing to the Vologda Oblast Governor and higher authorities for help for our mobilised citizens who were drafted on or before 1 October ...
3/ and sent for military training in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, where they were assigned to military unit 38838 [the 9th Motorised Rifle Regiment] in Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast.
Read 9 tweets
Nov 10
1/ The shiny new "PMC Wagner Center" in St Petersburg (see thread below) has run into trouble with the local authorities. Wagner's owner Yevgeny Prigozhin isn't happy, but unfortunately for him Russian bureaucracy can't be overcome with convicts.
2/ The St Petersburg city authorities have refused to give permission for the commissioning of the PMC Wagner Center due to "discrepancies" in its paperwork. Prigozhin is taking them to court:
3/ "An unreasonable and illegal reason is given in the refusal. The State Construction Supervision Service refers to the discrepancy between the area of ​​the constructed facility and the terms of the land lease agreement.
Read 7 tweets

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