1/ People across Russia are freezing in their homes in temperatures as low as -38°C because essential utility workers have been mobilised – even after the supposed end of mobilisation – and sent to Ukraine, hindering repair and maintenance work at home. ⬇️
2/ The "We can explain" Telegram channel reports that several regions and cities in Russia, including Astrakhan, Krasnodar and Rostov, are suffering problems with their communal heating systems because the engineers responsible for maintaining them have been mobilised.
3/ A source in Astrakhan's municipal services says: "We have appealed to the military registration and enlistment offices and officials, explaining that the heating season is coming soon and we need people, but we never received a clear answer."
4/ Despite being engineers, most of the mobilised workers were used as infantry. They were "told to hold a difficult section of the front, although there were no professional soldiers among our men, some had just finished their military studies, others were already in their 40s."
5/ Some of the men, who were fighting near the village of Mirolyubivka, were forgotten about by their commanders during the retreat from Kherson. They were left behind, resulting in them being captured by the Ukrainians.
6/ Two of the municipal workers were sent to serve with engineering forces near Kherson, then subsequently sent for training in Belarus before they are due to return to Crimea to build defences there.
7/ The source notes that the men were given draft notices even after the partial mobilisation was claimed to have ended. Essential workers are supposed to be exempt from mobilisation, but military officials have widely ignored such exemptions.
8/ Problems with heating have been reported across Russia, exacerbated by a lack of engineering personnel. Residents of Novosibirsk were left without heating in mid-November in temperatures of -30°C due to a damaged pipeline.
9/ 270 apartment blocks housing 70,000 people in Abakan faced a similar problem around the same time. At Artemovsky, a heating breakdown lasted for several days in temperatures of -38°C. /end
1/ A Russian soldier fighting near Pokrovsk says that the area is a scene of carnage, with dead Russians lying everywhere. Soldiers' families are being sent death notices even before the men go into assaults. Only four out of his group of 120 men survived one assault. ⬇️
2/ A Russian soldier from Orenburg with the call sign 'Elephant', fighting with the 5th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade (military unit 41698), has given a vivid account of his experiences fighting near Krasnohorivka and Pokrovsk, and how he was sent to Ukraine.
3/ He says that he signed a military contract in the western Russian city of Ulyanovsk in April 2024. Afterwards, he and several dozen others – including 33 Indian men – were sent to Ukraine and were immediately confined in a basement near Donetsk, to prevent them escaping.
1/ The Russian Minister of Defence, Andrey Belousov, is reported to have ordered a crackdown on corruption in the Russian armed forces. In particular, the widespread practices by commanders of extortion and murder ("zeroing out") are coming under scrutiny. ⬇️
2/ According to a private post to subscribers of the Razvedchik Telegram channel:
"Belousov instructed [Chief of the General Staff] Gerasimov to purge the army of banditry among commanders this winter, a high-ranking military official at the Ministry of Defence reported."
3/ "The head of the ministry demanded the urgent creation of commissions to investigate cases of extortion and so-called "zeroing out"—when soldiers are sent to certain death.
1/ Mobilised Russian soldiers serving on temporary contracts are being threatened en masse with execution if they do not sign contracts, making them permanent soldiers and ineligible for post-war demobilisation. Russian warbloggers are forcefully condemning this practice. ⬇️
2/ Russia began a partial mobilisation of reservists from September 2022 to raise 300,000 troops in the aftermath of Ukraine routing its forces in the Kharkiv region. Their time-limited service has been extended indefinitely by order of Vladimir Putin.
3/ Since then, Russia has chosen to rely more on volunteers who have signed contracts to become permanent professional ('contract') soldiers. Contract soldiers are paid less than the mobilised and are not subject to demobilisation, when it eventually happens.
1/ Russian soldiers are being handcuffed to each other, pepper-sprayed, and beaten to force them to go to the front lines. A soldier says that ex-POWs and badly wounded men on crutches are being forced to fight. "They're just throwing us in for meat," he says. ⬇️
2/ Speaking in a video recorded in the back of a Russian army truck, a soldier from the 114th Motorised Rifle Regiment (military unit 24776) has recorded an appeal for help. He speaks of the violence being used against the men, and shows how he is handcuffed to a comrade:
3/ "People are being held against their will. They're being handcuffed and pepper-sprayed. Is that normal?", he asks.
1/ Indians fighting in the Russian army have been killed en masse near Pokrovsk. A survivor says in a video that his friends, who included students studying in Russia, died only 10 days after signing a military contract and being sent to the front without any training. ⬇️
2/ An Indian man tells how his friend, a student, signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defence because he wanted to make money. He had previously been doing "a month of work digging dugouts", likely in the Russian rear or in a border region.
3/ "When he came [back] to Moscow ... he sees that if he signs a contract, he gets 2,000,000 rubles [$24,584 – note that the average annual salary in India is $4,038]."
His friend was sent to Pokrovsk only 10 days later, without any training. As the man says:
69 years ago today, Soviet troops had deposed the pro-democracy government of Hungary and were wiping out every remaining pocket of armed resistance. But Hungarian revolutionaries were still fighting back desperately against overwhelming odds.
2/ As the Hungarian Revolution enters its second week, the Soviet Army has effectively neutralised the Hungarian Army and crushed much of the resistance to its invasion of Hungary. Hungarian revolutionary fighters and some soldiers continue to fight on in Budapest and elsewhere.
3/ The revolutionaries are holding onto a handful of positions in central Budapest, including Corvin Square, Moszkva Square (the present-day Széll Kálmán Square), and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. They fight on in the desperate hope of Western intervention.