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Natalka

@NatalkaKyiv

Aug 26

‼️ This is an absolute must-read for people who want to understand what's happening (for real) in Russia. Granted this post comes from a Russian military blogger who sees the war through her own distorted prism but nonetheless, she is very honest about what plagues the Russian Army.

“Kursk region: problems, fakes, corruption.

Since August 11, I have not written anything about the enemy's invasion of the Kursk region. And what can I say if the Defense Ministry's post calls the seizure of part of the Kursk region's territory an "attempted invasion."

Official newspeak, and in fact lies and a general misunderstanding of what is happening from the very bottom to the very top, forces you to just do your job and not communicate with morons.

Most importantly, I did not want to interfere with our guys working - pushing the enemy out, and I watched what others were writing.

My findings, like for any sane person in the country who is without panic and without "we will soon reach Warsaw", that is, are real facts.

So, let's start with February 2022, what preceded the transfer of military action to the territory of the Russian Federation, and was it really so secret.

Part 1. The General Staff's problems with calculations.

The New York Times, and some journalists and media outlets focused on laundering a certain group in power, report that the Kursk operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was a top secret.

So top secret that a year ago, far-sighted people, those with brains in their heads and not instructions, said that Ukraine would move the front to Russian territory.

That is, to the territory of the regions of our country bordering Ukraine (so to speak, the territory of ‘old Russia’) - Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk.

The front line from 2022 (Kherson, Zaporozhye, LPR, DPR) was somewhere around 1,200 kilometers.

At the very beginning, there were miscalculations that when we entered on February 24, everyone would greet us with flowers.

Yes, yes, those people who burned Russians in the Trade Union House in Odesa, and were reinforced by "Azov", "Kraken" and other formations - will be glad to see the military with the Russian tricolor.

Only people with deep schizophrenia who have long been out of touch with reality can think like that.

At the beginning of 2022, our guys were getting destroyed, no command to shoot back was issued from Moscow, so our army lost personnel and equipment.

This led to the fact that our army, which had already suffered losses, could not hold an extended front with a trained enemy army.

The Wagner PMC was called in for help and the international Special Forces "Akhmat" was created under the leadership of Apti Alaudinov.

But even here there was not enough regular army, Akhmat and Wagner are fighting guys, but there were too few of them, and again miscalculation and lies led to the fact that the Ukrainian side harshly pressured us in early September with their Kharkiv counteroffensive - Izyum, Balakleya, Liman happened.

We "regrouped" so much that we left the locals and our own surrounded. Wounded soldiers woke up in hospitals after anesthesia and the Armed Forces of Ukraine were already standing over them.

And again, it turns out that Ukraine was preparing for war, it turns out that the counteroffensive was being prepared, but for some reason the military leadership did not attach importance to all the information. They had to carry out mobilization in September 2022.

And then the miscalculations came one after another. Equipment and uniforms were stolen/sold/resold/not even manufactured, the machine guns were rusty, Mosin rifles were issued.

There was no communication, the spools from the Great Patriotic War were issued. The first mobilized were sent to the front after a few weeks, completely untrained, to plug the holes.

Again, a loss of resources, its waste, replenishment of the exchange fund for the enemy, since holes remained, and people were running out.
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Global problems with payments, treatments, and rehabilitations began. All this was spread by word of mouth, which caused the outflow of volunteers to the front.

While the incompetent commanders were wasting people and equipment, social problems such as non-issuance of combat veteran statuses, non-payment for injuries, non-payment for combat action and much, much more were simply not resolved.

The government, the State Duma, the Federation Council, as institutions of power, refrained from the topic of SMO. Only a small part of the elite actively joined the work.

The situation was worsened by the fact that the absolute majority of our 300s were from drones, the need for which was denied by the military and officials aged 60+.

At this time, the volunteers supplied the army with drones, thermal imagers, uniforms, camouflage nets, logs, weapons, cars, and even water and food.

Part 2. General Staff problems with calculations

Problems with shells have also led and continue to lead to irrational waste of human resources. The battles near Vugledar, Avdiivka and Maryinka clearly demonstrated how not to do it. And in other areas, they sent people into assault without proper artillery training.

In areas where commanders were not distinguished by their intelligence and resourcefulness, they forced soldiers to fight because they wanted to get awarded the Hero (of Russia) or had take a village with three destroyed houses by a certain date.

Such commanders arranged formations near the line of contact, arranged "choral" singing for 100-150 people. We all know how this ends.

The enemy was watching all this. They saw how the smaller resources deployed by the RF Armed Forces was thoughtlessly wasted compared to them. And therefore the enemy began to create additional hotbeds of conflict in order to stretch the front even more.

So that we constantly pulled forces from one place to another, thereby creating gaps in the defense of the territories we had already occupied.

Is this a secret move by Ukraine? No, it is quite natural and logical. The question is not about them, but why did we allow this?

We knew that Ukraine could not resist Russia along the front line, which was imposed by the RF Armed Forces, but it was as if we deliberately did not protect our borders, allowing the enemy into our territory.

And Ukraine took the path of transferring the acute phase of the conflict to territories where there is no SMO, seeing that there is no one to resist them there.

First, they entered Belgorod, drawing our forces from other directions, now they have created a hotbed in the Kursk region, also drawing forces from other directions.

In the meantime, Russia seems to be deliberately weakening its front. When human resources were running out due to wrong decisions and systemic problems, the task was set to take volunteers, since the country did not dare to mobilize again.

In the first wave, volunteers went themselves, but then there were fewer and fewer of them, and the quality of the soldiers was getting lower. But there was a recruitment plan and it’s still there.

When the number of those who volunteered for a contract began to decline, they began to agitate or force the mobilized to switch to a contract basis and thus reported on the replenishment of contract soldiers, although in fact the number of people did not increase.

They tried to increase the recruitment of soldiers through the Wagner recruitment structure, but some recruiters simply began to trade in people, cooperating with military registration and enlistment offices and local administrations.

And good fighters with specialties - artilleryman, grenade launchers, signalmen, tank crewmen and so on - fell into the hands of the "butchers" and were immediately sent to the assault, so we lost a lot of qualified military personnel.

Now we see that payments for volunteers are being increased. I am not a supporter of this.

Firstly, it brings discord between the mobilized and contract soldiers, especially their families - why does someone get more, and we get less. And those who went to fight earlier are also indignant.

Secondly, it is even irrational from the point of view of spending public money, since often between signing a contract and ending up in a hospital bed - 1.5-2 months (in part number 4 of my opus I will separately touch upon financial miscalculations).

Thirdly, many are in no hurry to sign up, waiting for more increases in payments.

Fourthly, as I already wrote, the majority does not want to go, because of the systemic problems, which I constantly repeat - are not getting solved, or are solved only manually and individually.

Part 3. The Ukrainian Armed Forces' offensive on Kursk. Discipline.

In the previous two parts, I wanted to show that we ourselves are to blame for many of the problems. Infantilism in power is off the charts, many officials and parliamentarians avoid the topic of the SMO and pretend to be out of date, saying that this is the President's topic, we have nothing to do with it.

But there is no less infantilism below, both in power at the regional and municipal level, and at the front, and in society.

Residents of the border areas of the Kursk region recorded appeals to the ruling Moscow for several days, even weeks before the Ukrainian Armed Forces' invasion of their territory.

Residents of Tetkino have been appealing to all possible authorities for several months, but there has been no response to their appeals.

As a result, we got the Ukrainian Armed Forces entering freely, and a few border guards fighting them.

The conscripts who were smarter joined the border guards, the rest simply surrendered.

The heads of some administrations lied that everything was under control, and federal channels happily broadcasted it.

Conclusion - we ourselves allowed the enemy to enter and gain a foothold. Everyone was too relaxed, there was no discipline or order.

The behavior of some of the servicemen on the border does not correspond to the duty and task of a serviceman of the Russian Armed Forces.

Serving on the border in a warring country, they were absolutely relaxed - in civilian clothes, without weapons. That is why there are so many prisoners.

Many were taken not at their deployment location, but in populated areas where they were accustomed to resting from the hardships of service.

I have photos and videos of the brigades that are going to Kursk as reinforcements. They are going stocked with alcohol, while others are fighting off the enemy.

Neither the Ratiborites, nor Akhmat, nor Pyatnashka have such problems, they are strict about this.

Small units, autonomous from the Ministry of Defense, show themselves as better, because they have serious commanders, their superiors value them, and they themselves value the fighters.

Look at the photos and videos of prisoners from the SMO zone - the guys are all shell-shocked, dirty, and wounded - it is clear that they fought to the end.

Compare that to the footage of prisoners from the Kursk region - some in slippers, some in civilian clothes, all clean.

And about conscripts. Yes, the question of the correctness of their use at the border is open (here my opinion has not changed - they are in the combat zone - they should have both status and payments). But we must not forget that they are also military personnel, they took an oath. And in the end it turns out that civilians were killed, and the military surrendered in droves?

Lack of discipline, drunkenness, abandonment by command, negligence leads to the loss of personnel and the death of civilians. This is the plague of our army.

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Natalka

@NatalkaKyiv

Mar 12

‼️‼️‼️Excerpts from an article by Medusa about Ukrainian children in Russia.

This article explains the institutionalized brainwashing Ukrainian children are subjected to and it uncovers Russia’s future plan - to make an industry importing Ukrainian children into Russia.

It also gives a clue as to why the Russian State Duma wants to lower the age of kids going to jail for sabotage from 16 to 14.

“The exact number of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia during the war is unknown - according to Kyiv, we are talking about almost 20,000.

Russian officials are persuading Ukrainian children to forget about their homeland - and convince them that their parents will never come to take them home.

The authorities are confident that they will be able to "re-educate" the stolen children.

To find out how this system works, the special correspondent of "Medusa" Lilia Yapparova studied thousands of documents and talked to employees of the Russian Ministry of Education, the main department responsible for the "indoctrination" of Ukrainian children.

"Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes! - nationalist greeting."

"Katsaps, vatniki is a derogatory nickname of representatives of Russian nationality."

"Rashism is the unofficial name of the political ideology and social practice of the ruling regime of Russia at the beginning of the 21st century <...> The term was invented by Russophobes."

"The Marauder Federation - [so] Russophobes and extremists call the Russian Federation."

"Orcs - used by Russophobes and extremists for the offensive name of Russian servicemen"

These are quotes from a dictionary compiled in 2022 by the Ministry of Education of Russia. It is addressed to school teachers - so that they know what "signs of extremism on a nationalist basis" words and expressions Ukrainian children might use.”

Now Russian teachers face the task of "reorienting and establishing the Russian identity of the younger generation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions," the documents say.

Examples of such "reorientation" are also given in them. For example, they are told about a schoolgirl from Zaporizhzhia, who published on social networks "a video of the burning of the Russian flag with anti-Russian comments" - and immediately became a defendant in a criminal case.

It is possible to prevent such "destructive manifestations" in Ukrainian children at the earliest stages, according to the department. Above all, immediately after they are taken out of Ukraine.

As stated in the specially developed manual "Accompanying teenagers who arrived from combat zones", such children can show "protest", "capriciousness", "distrust of adults", behave aggressively, express "ideas of personal superiority" - as well as in general "experience difficulties in looking at situations through the eyes of a neutral observer".

Teachers should help such a child who, according to the department, is already defitient when it comes to "knowledge" and "social skills", that are "present by default in Russian children."

The training manual says:

If you know that the child's family members died or went missing during the hostilities, [in your communication with the child] focus not on people, but on events...

Don't say "it's nothing terrible," "don't worry, they're in a better place," "they're looking at you from heaven"... Honestly tell the child that his loved ones have died or his house is destroyed... Say directly that they're dead.

Give the child the opportunity to go through the emotions. For example, if he's angry, let him tear paper.

As a result, the schoolchild should feel "a sense of pride in his country, patriotism, a sense of belonging to the country."”

Continued below⬇️
#Ukraine #Russia #RussiaIsANaziState #RussialsATerroristState #RissiaUkraineWar

“The recommendations do not specify which country to be proud of. And since the war is the only reason why children found themselves in Russia - the manual of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation describes it as follows: "the complication of the geopolitical situation <...> prompting families <...> to forced resettlement."”

"Re-education" of Ukrainian children "on the basis of spiritual and moral values, historical and national-cultural traditions of the Russian Federation" has to last until graduation. As a result, teenagers should "form a Russian identity."

The source of "Medusa" in the Ministry of Education, who is well acquainted with the text of these manuals, calls them "intense b*llshit":

"Say they're dead," it's f*cked up. If a child does not know about the fate of his relatives, a simple "they died" is almost the worst thing to say. You need to find out first what the child knows about their fate, how he assesses their chances for the future, whether it makes sense to keep hope...

Nowhere is it argued why integration was chosen from the strategies [of working with Ukrainian children]. If we try to integrate children into our culture, it means no intention to return them to their native culture is even implied.

Moreover, [in theory] integration takes place in the environment of multiculturalism - where cultural diversity and respect for the culture of the non-dominant group are allowed. And now try to show respect for the Ukrainian language, anthem, coat of arms and you’d go to jail! Therefore, the integration of these children is impossible. Rather, it's about assimilation or marginalization.

The source in the department notes that the Ministry is concerned about the "integration" of Ukrainian children not only because it is instructed to do so.

The Ministry of Education is really afraid of them: "In our conversations Ukrainian children are potential terrorists. We are not morons - and we understand that Russia did not come to Ukraine "with peace and kindness." And that children who were taken from there to a hostile environment may begin to resist.
Maybe with the support from their Ukrainian relatives...

Behind the scenes, we argue this way, even at the level of leadership. But at the round tables, of course, they say that "Ukrainian children are the most wonderful."

The source adds that at the end of 2022, employees of the Ministry of Education began to prepare for potential terrorist attacks and sabotage directed specifically against their department.

The documents studied by Medusa include "armed attack" (including "using flammable liquids"), "hostage-taking", "explosive devices", "arson", "unmanned aircraft attack" among the threats.

The head of the federal charitable foundation, which also helps orphans, also heard about such fears (he talked to "Medusa" on condition of anonymity):

"The office understands that the integration of Ukrainian teenagers is an explosive situation, and they try to instruct both teachers and everyone else," he says. “Our schoolchildren are also pumped up with ideas about "fascists are in Ukraine" - and then suddenly a real "ukrofascist" is brought to their classroom”.

Continued below⬇️

“Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Vladimir Putin decided to pay additional attention to the "socialization of teenagers" - and by a personal decree issued 52 million rubles to the Ministry of Education.

With this money, the Federal Center for the Development of Adolescent Socialization Programs (FC RPSP) was opened in the Ministry.

It became the operator of the strategic program "Teenagers of Russia", which was presented to Putin two weeks after the beginning of the invasion - on March 9, 2022.

This program is an initiative of the Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, designed, according to her statements, to help "millions of teenagers safely go through the turbulence zone" during the war.

Since then, the FC RPSP - it is also called the Federal Teenage Center - has been coordinating work with schoolchildren in all regions of the Russian Federation and in the occupied Ukrainian territories.

Particular emphasis is placed on "assistance <...> to minors in the area of the special military operation" follows from the documents at the disposal of Medusa.

The new structure, which is simultaneously subordinate to both the Ministry of Education and Lvova-Belova, was opened "especially for Ukrainian children" - "to explain to them "where the truth is," say two sources of "Medusa" in the federal department.”

“It is the employees of this center, as the sources of "Medusa" formulate, who "erase the Ukrainian past of these children and embed them into the Russian world."

In particular, the FC RPSP is actively developing a network of "teenage spaces" in which "patriotic seminars" are held, where they are told "about the achievements of our country" and "the significance of events that are taking place in the new regions of Russia".

There, teenagers also meet with people whom Valery Mayorov himself calls "safe adults" - with "participants of the SMO" and priests.”

“"Medusa" managed to talk to the director of one of the regional teenage centers cooperating with the FC RPSP.

She described her work with Ukrainian schoolchildren as follows: "After all, children [who are at war] recover faster than adults. Teenagers, of course, are all in social networks where they are influenced: [in the end] they do not understand why this war began... Many support Ukraine, many are opposed to the head of state. We invite specialists from the competent authorities to talk to them."

In addition, thanks to the network of "teenage spaces" schoolchildren participate in military sports games, go to exhibitions called "We are against Nazism", shoot in the shooting range and can even "prepare for service in the Russian Armed Forces."

According to the report of the Ministry of Education, by September 2023, these institutions "were visited by more than 150,000 teenagers."

"In fact, Mayorov manages a significant part of the ideological work with teenagers outside schools," explains the source of "Medusa" in the department. - Children return from the school where they were brainwashed - and go to these institutions, where they are still brainwashed.

Such representative offices are also being opened in the occupied territories: the branches of the center are already working in Donetsk and Mariupol, and are preparing to open in Khartsyzsk and other cities and towns of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine. Lvova-Belova and the management of the FC RPSP personally control their work.”

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