Thread by @DrDenaGrayson

🔥DECIMATED: One of #Russia’s most formidable combat units—the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade that protects Russia’s Arctic nuclear submarine arsenal—sent its best fighters & weapons to #Ukraine this year and was DESTROYED.

#StandWithUkraine
washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/…

During my expedition to the #NorthPole in 2017, I bunked at the same base where #Russia’s 200th Arctic brigade was training.

Here’s video that I shot from my iPhone of some of the troops departing the Arctic base for a training mission.

WOW: Less than 900 were left of the 1,400 to 1,600 soldiers in #Russia’s elite brigade who were shipped off to #Ukraine.

And some of those still being counted as part of the unit were listed as hospitalized, missing or “refuseniks” unwilling to fight.💥

Many of the unit’s weapons—including mobile rocket launchers and tanks—were destroyed or captured. The unit’s commander suffered a “craniocerebral injury,” was unable to remember battlefield events, and would soon have to be hospitalized.

#Russia’s 200th brigade’s collapse reflects the valiant performance of #Ukraine’s military, and forces that derailed Putin’s plans—#corruption, strategic miscalculations and a failure to grasp the true capabilities of its own military or those of its adversary.🧐

🔥Per a soldier now in the 200th after being drafted: “The unit is in a state of decay.” He & others were issued “painted helmets from 1941 & vests without plates. “They are not even training us.…They just tell you, ‘You are a shooter now. Here you go, here is a machine gun.’”

The dismemberment of the 200th stands out. It entered #Ukraine with better training, newer equipment & more experience—including prior missions in Ukraine. Now, given the magnitude of its losses, one European military official said, it “cannot be considered a fighting force.”😎

🔥#Ukraine Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, who later commanded the Kharkiv offensive:

“What’s there to know about them (#Russia’s 200th brigade)? They run away very well.”💥