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/ Soldiers of the Russian 55th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade say that their unit is a "conveyor belt" of robbery, torture and death. Commanders are said to systematically extort soldiers before sending them to die in assaults, even making them pay to carry weapons. ⬇️
2/ An unnamed soldier who says he has served with the brigade (military unit 55115) since December 2024 has recorded a video appealing to the Russian authorities. He asks them to investigate the personal finances of officers who he says are involved in extortion.
3/ The soldier says that he and his comrades are forced to transfer funds to platoon commanders with the call signs "Physicist" and "Charon", as well as company commander Andrei "Gerych" Gerasimov. Those who refused to pay were "eliminated".
1/ An unusually frank Russian commentary admits that few survive serving in a stormtrooper unit and that "the phrase 'experienced stormtrooper' is an oxymoron". Thousands of deserters are reportedly being punished by being sent to such units as an effective death sentence. ⬇️
2/ The author of the 'Mercenary Ivan Dain' Telegram channel writes: "For almost four years now, the attitude towards stormtroopers has not changed fundamentally."
3/ "Stormtroopers are one of the riskiest specialisms on the line of contact and the chances of seriously doing it for a long time are close to zero. Seriously, I have not met people who have been successfully engaged in stormtrooper work for a long period of time.
1/ A former Russian police officer who is preparing for his imminent murder in Ukraine has recorded a farewell video explaining the circumstances of his death to his relatives. He says that a Russian major general has ordered that he is to die on the front line. ⬇️
2/ The video features a man named Mark Erikovich Sadykov, who says that because of some unspecified dispute, he was demoted and transferred to the 111th Regiment of the 9th Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade on the orders of "Major General Solovyov".
3/ (This may be a reference to Major General Igor Petrovich Solovyov, an FSB officer who has commanded an FSB special forces unit.)
Sadykov says he was a military police employee for seven years and a graduate of the prestigious Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School.
1/ Russia is reported to be planning a major offensive into the Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions and an offensive against Odesa over the summer, using North Koreans to secure the Russian border. The Russian writer Maxim Kalashnikov calls it "practically fantastical". ⬇️
2/ According to the private Telegram channel Razvedchik ('Scout'), the Russian General Staff has given Vladimir Putin a plan for an offensive "in the second half of the summer" of 2025. The channel reports what its sources say about the proposal:
3/ "They are proposing to release the military for the operation from border protection, and North Korean soldiers are being trained to replace them.
1/ The late Russian transport minister, Roman Starovoit, is reported to have amassed more than 1 billion rubles ($12.7m) worth of property and luxury watches, likely the proceeds of fraud and bribery. More details of his death on Monday have also emerged. ⬇️
2/ Russian investigators are reported to have discovered that Starovoit, who is said to have been facing imminent indictment and a possible 20-year jail sentence, possessed material wealth far in excess of his ministerial salary.
3/ According to the INSIDER-T Telegram news channel, "His mistress did not want to give the keys to the dacha of the ex-minister who committed suicide, so they had to break down the door. What they saw astonished the security forces."
1/ A Russian lieutenant who deserted from the Russian army after serving under a commander who murdered his own men for their salaries has spoken of his experiences in Ukraine. His unit was wiped out at Krynki and he witnessed soldiers being whipped and executed with grenades. ⬇️
2/ Daniil from Volgograd was one of the original batch of 300,000 men mobilised from September 2022 onwards. He had never previously served in the army, and was given minimal training before deployment – firing a single magazine of cartridges "for show".
3/ Despite his inexperience, he was made a lieutenant in the Black Sea Fleet Marine Corps. His first commander in occupied Crimea "was constantly smoking weed" and disciplined the men and soldiers under his command with an electric shock device confiscated from some Dagestanis.