1/ Soldiers returning home to Russia after fighting in Ukraine are reportedly responsible for an increasing number of violent incidents, including fights and shootings. However, the Russian courts are being very lenient towards offenders, dismaying and frustrating civilians. ⬇️
2/ The independent Russian news outlet 'We can explain' ('MO') reports on what it calls 'special military operation syndrome' – the rising incidence of violence committed by returning soldiers. It's likely that many are suffering from untreated PTSD.
3/ Many incidents have been reported but have only resulted in light punishments from the courts, including:
4/ 🔴 "60,000 rubles ($803) for assaulting a member of the National Guard. The other day a Voronezh court passed a very mild sentence – a military man who hit and insulted a guardsman several times got away with a fine. The incident took place in a Voronezh hotel in September.
5/ The Russian Federal Guard Service was called by the staff, as the guest was behaving inappropriately. It came down to a fight, and the law enforcers made a concerted effort to get the troublemaker off.
6/ 🔴 In July 2022, a man threatened passers-by with a shotgun in Elektrostal, near Moscow. He said he had recently arrived from Ukraine and "they shot him there".
7/ 🔴 September 2022: In Tula, a military man beat up a pizzeria owner with a chair. The reason for the attack, according to the hooligan, was that he was not shown "enough respect" at the pizzeria.
8/ 🔴 In January 2023, a man in camouflage came with a Kalashnikov assault rifle to a nightclub and pointed the weapon at people standing on the stairs.
9/ 🔴 The loudest and most tragic event involving a serviceman returned from Ukraine took place in Kostroma. On November 5, Stanislav Ionkin, 23, who had been wounded, fired a flare gun at the Polygon nightclub (the incident was not captured on video).
10/ A fire broke out in the premises, killing 13 people."
MO notes that there have also been many incidents of weapons smuggling – Russia has strict gun control laws which returning soldiers have repeatedly violated.
11/ Since February 2022, it reports, "at least 42 Russian servicemen have been put on trial for misappropriation, storage, transportation and carrying of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices".
12/ There has also been a murder case: "in Udmurtia, according to investigators, in the course of a drinking bout in a garage, a comrade who had returned from the war shot his friend in the eye and then strangled him with a wire. The trial began on 9 February." /end
1/ Russia is reportedly considering proposing a wide-ranging economic partnership with the Trump administration, including joint cooperation to push fossil fuels as an alternative to Chinese and European clean energy solutions, in opposition to curbing climate change. ⬇️
2/ Bloomberg is reporting that Russia has prepared a seven-point memo that includes a return to the dollar settlement system, reversing Putin's by now well-established policy of creating an alternative system insulated from US economic pressure.
3/ The proposals also include joint US-Russian ventures in manufacturing, nuclear energy, oil and LNG extraction, preferential conditions for US companies in Russia to compensate for past losses, cooperation on raw materials, and jointly working against clean energy.
1/ Why does the Russian government appear to be so clueless about the role Telegram plays in military communications? The answer, one warblogger suggests, is that the military leadership doesn't want to admit its failure to provide its own reliable communications solutions. ⬇️
2/ Recent claims by high-ranking officials that Telegram isn't relevant to military communications have prompted howls of outrage and detailed rebuttals from Russian warbloggers, but have also pointed to a deeper problem about what reliance on Telegram (and Starlink) represents.
3/ In both cases, the Russian military has failed abysmally to provide workable solutions. Telegram and Starlink were both adopted so widely because the 'official' alternatives (military messngers and the Yamal satellite constellation) are slow, unreliable and lack key features.
1/ Telegram is deeply embedded into Russian military units' internal communications, providing functionality that MAX, the Russian government's authorised app, doesn't have. A commentary highlights the vast gap that is being opened up by the government's blocking of Telegram. ⬇️
2/ The Two Majors Charitable Foundation writes that without Telegram, information exchange, skills transfer, and moral mobilisation work within the Russian army will be crippled:
3/ "I'd really like to add that for a long time, we've been gathering specialized groups in closed chats, including those focused on engineering and UAVs, to share experiences and build a knowledge base. Almost everyone there is a frontline engineer.
1/ Russia's Federal Customs Service is seeking to prosecute Russian volunteers who are importing reconnaissance drones from China to give to frontline troops. It's the latest chapter in a saga of bureaucratic obstruction that is blocking vital supplies to the Russian army. ⬇️
2/ Much of the army's equipment, and many of its drones, are purchased with private money by volunteer supporters or the soldiers themselves. High-tech equipment such as drones and communications equipment is purchased in China or Central Asia and imported into Russia.
3/ However, the Federal Customs Service has been a major blocker. Increased customs checks on the borders have meant that cargo trucks have suffered delays of days or even weeks, drastically slowing the provision of essential supplies for the Russian army.
1/ Leaked casualty figures from an elite Russian special forces brigade indicate that it has suffered huge losses in Ukraine, equivalent to more than half of its entire roster of personnel. Scores of men are listed as being 'unaccounted for', in other words having deserted. ⬇️
2/ The 10th Separate Guards Special Purpose Brigade (military unit 51532) is a special forces (spetsnaz) unit under the GRU. It is a 2002 refoundation by Russia of a Soviet-era spetsnaz unit that, ironically, passed to Ukraine when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.
3/ Since the invasion of February 2022, the brigade has been fighting on the Kherson front, which has seen constant and extremely bloody fighting over the islands in the Dnipro river and delta. Russian sources have reported very high casualties.
1/ Russian warbloggers are continuing to provide examples of how Telegram is used for frontline battlefield communications, to refute the claim of presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov that such a thing is "not possible to imagine". ⬇️
2/ Platon Mamadov provides two detailed examples:
"Example number one:
Aerial reconnaissance of Unit N spotted a Ukrainian self-propelled gun in a shelter in the middle of town N."
3/ "Five minutes after the discovery, the target's coordinates and a detailed video were uploaded to a special secret chat group read by all drone operators, scouts, and artillerymen in that sector of the front.