Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian soldiers on the front line in Ukraine are reportedly cooking and using drugs to deal with combat stress and try to get out of fighting by injuring themselves – but military doctors aren't fooled and won't accept bribes. It's said to be impossible to get out. ⬇️

2/ The 'People of Baikal' Telegram channel has posted an account by the wife of a mobilised man from Ust-Kut in Russia's Irkutsk region. Her husband was mobilised in October 2022 and sent to an assault brigade in the 'Luhansk People's Republic' after training in Russia.

3/ His wife Irina says: "Almost everyone there is shell-shocked. They are being bombarded from the air incessantly. Soldiers are thrown into the battle without tanks and they actually go to the battlefield with submachine guns and grenades. The losses are high."

4/ The husband and his comrades sleep in the basements of abandoned houses, or in dugouts, where many of them take drugs. They cook the drugs in their sleeping-places. It's unclear how the drug ingredients get to the front line.

5/ Irina's husband says: "It's a chaotic mess. I was going to war and this is some kind of fucked-up situation". By his account, the soldiers are "responsible for literally everything – storming, communications, reconnaissance, transportation of ammunition, and the wounded.

6/ And the funny thing is that the local military police are constantly trying to control them, even issuing fines for minor infractions. But no one touches drug addicts."

7/ According to Irina's husband, the soldiers try to injure themselves to get out of the front line and into hospital. For example, 'People of Baikal' reports, "they drive red-hot splinters of mortar shells into their bones."

8/ However, medics have got wise to such tricks and are able to distinguish self-inflicted wounds from combat injuries. In such cases they refuse any further hospitalisation. Irina says that it's impossible to get out of the front lines by trickery or bribery.

9/ "Bribes and bribing doctors do not work. There is no problem with money at the front, the main problem is the shortage of men, who are being lost at an incredible rate". /end

Source:
t.me/Baikal_People/…

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1632824…