1/ Citizens of the puppet 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DNR) are complaining en masse that they are not being paid their promised compensation for deaths and injuries caused to local residents by the war. The DNR itself admits that it owes more than 38 billion rubles ($467m). ⬇️
2/ Relatives and soldiers of the DNR's armed forces – which have been decimated due to being used as so-called 'meat waves' against Ukrainian positions – have been posting numerous videos complaining about the lack of compensation payments and appealing to Putin for help.
3/ In one video, a wife says: "Starting from September 2022, funding for lump-sum compensation for wounded and killed DNR servicemen for 2022 was terminated. We submitted documents to the commission of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy of the DNR.
4/ "There are a lot of us. We applied to all authorities. From the presidential administration to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.
5/ "All our appeals are forwarded to the government of the DNR, which redirects them to the Ministry of Labour, and the answers come from there that there is no funding. We write to the deputies and there are no results."
6/ According to the wife of one wounded soldier, his unit "collected all the necessary documents promptly, the medical examiner issued a conclusion of a severe injury.
7/ "In November we submitted all the documents for payment, and for seven months there have been no payments, the allowance during treatment is 30,000 rubles ($371). The answer is the same, there is no funding."
8/ People seeking compensation have complained to the DNR state prosecutor's office, which admitted that an audit had "established the fact of lack of funding for this type of payment, which requires an amount of more than 38 billion rubles."
9/ It's very unlikely that the DNR will be able to pay the sums it owes, as its finances are precarious, its economy is a mess and it's kept afloat only by Russian government funding.
10/ The Russian government has shown little concern previously for the welfare of DNR soldiers and their families, so there seems to be little likelihood that the relatives' video appeals will achieve much. /end
1/ Men mobilised by the Russian Army were reportedly sold to a mercenary group for 25,000 rubles each ($310) and told they would be shot unless they fought in the Battle of Bahkmut. Hundreds are said to have become casualties. Now their relatives cannot contact the survivors. ⬇️
2/ According to the relatives, 501 mobilised men were taken from Crimea to a training range in the 'Luhansk People's Republic', where they were trained by Wagner Group mercenaries. They were then taken to the Veterans PMC's base in the 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DPR) in April.
3/ Relatives of the mobiks say that their men were "driven around in circles for 11 hours, then they were given water and passed out. Maybe there was even something in this water. And in the morning they woke up to shouts of "Wake up!" from unknown people with "Veterans" badges."
1/ A single district in the Novosibirsk region is reported to have sent nearly 4 percent of its entire population to the Ukraine war. Its former head is said to have mobilised anyone "who crossed her path". Angry residents smeared her car with faeces in protest. ⬇️
2/ The Suzun district of the Siberian region of Novosibirsk has a population of around 31,000 people. According to local residents, around 1,200 people – 3.9 percent of the entire population (probably amounting to around 7.5–8 percent of the male population) – were mobilised.
3/ The entire Novosibirsk region, with a population of 2.8 million people, is reported to have mobilised around 11,500 people. Those mobilised from this one small district therefore equal around 10 percent of those mobilised from the entire region.
1/ A carload of Russian conscripts who were guarding the Russia-Ukraine border is reported to have been hit by a missile, killing four people and injuring six more. The incident highlights the dangers faced by Russia's barely trained and poorly armed conscripts on the border. ⬇️
2/ Russian media outlets report that the incident happened near Borisovka in the Belgorod region on 1 June. According to one of the survivors, the car was hit – likely by an anti-tank missile - as it pulled out of a forest belt onto a road. The men were going to a bathhouse.
3/ The exact location isn't reported, but from the description, the incident is likely to have taken place along the Lozova river around Kazach'e-Rudchenskoe or Lozovaya Rudka, where a forest belt with a parallel road behind it on the Russian side separates Russia from Ukraine.
1/ The Russian authorities reportedly believe that Tuesday's drone attack on Moscow was launched from within Russia. An operation to find vehicles carrying drones is said to have been launched across a wide area of western Russia.
2/ The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel reports that "Moscow is confident that the drones that attacked the capital and several other regions were launched from Russian territory. As a result, from today, cars will be searched at checkpoints for UAVs."
3/ The Russian Ministry of Defence is said to have launched Operation Anaconda to seach for 'UAV carriers' on a permanent basis. VChK-OGPU reports that "teams of operatives, district police officers and traffic police officers are now being set up to be deployed at key posts."
1/ The Latin letters Z and V are now regarded by Russia's authorities as patriotic symbols of its war in Ukraine. Recent court cases have shown that using them in disapproved ways will be punished. ⬇️
2/ In the latest such case, a woman from Nizhny Novgorod is reported to have been fined 30 thousand rubles ($371) for "discrediting the RF Armed Forces" for putting a sticker reading "беZумие" ("madness") on her car.
3/ The letters Z and V were originally used by the Russian army as recognition symbols on its vehicles in the invasion of Ukraine, but the Russian Ministry of Defence has retrospectively turned them into shorthand for patriotic slogans.
1/ Russia's missile defence system is supposed to be able to detect a football-sized object from 8,000 km away. However, corruption is said to have left it "full of holes" and the head of Russia's Space Forces may now face prosecution, as a scandal at the Russian MOD deepens. ⬇️
2/ I've previously highlighted the scandal, which has reportedly spawned a separate investigation into corruption in Russia's National Defence Control Centre (NDCC) that has led to the arrest of Major General Vyacheslav Lobuzko.
3/ Corruption is also reported to be at the heart of the scandal affecting Russia's giant Voronezh radars. Contractors are said to have widely used cheap and unsuitable foreign-made components. Tests have reportedly found this has seriously affected the radars' performance.