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/ Russian vehicle logistics have virtually collapsed in frontline areas due to the constant threat of drones, forcing soldiers to walk tens of kilometers to obtain fuel, food, water and medical supplies. A first-hand account gives an insight into the extreme danger they face. ⬇️
2/ As previously reported, transporting supplies and evacuating the wounded is now largely done on foot (or, famously, by donkeys) in an area about 20 km deep behind the front lines in Ukraine. Anything that moves is attacked by drones.
3/ Men have to walk across open fields with no concealment or ability to evade drone attacks, leaving them very vulnerable. The Russians constantly take casualties just to keep their front lines supplied.
1/ Russian forces are reportedly suffering from a severe shortage of FPV drones. They only receive a few poor-quality drones a day from state-approved companies, despite volunteer manufacturers having produced much better drones which the state is refusing to support. ⬇️
2/ Russian warbloggers have been complaining for at least a year that volunteer efforts to mass-produce drones, replicating Ukraine's very successful drone programme, are being blocked by the Russian military-industrial complex and its allies in the army.
3/ Russia does have a volunteer drone-production programme, which is described in detail in the thread below. However, the so-called 'people's military-industrial complex' clearly has problems in getting its products to where they are needed.
1/ A Russian air base is seeking urgent donations after its last remaining forklift broke down under the strain of loading 1500 kg bombs onto aircraft. The air base has already had to resort to transporting bombs using bicycles for want of other means of transportation. ⬇️
2/ Russian warbloggers have banded together to fundraise for a new forklift with a capacity of 3 tons, costing around 1.5 million rubles ($17,800). Kirill Fedorov of the 'War History Weapons' Telegram channel writes:
3/ "‼️LET'S LOAD A BOMB ON THE RUSSIAN BOMBER‼️
Unfortunately, our main suppliers of FAB [bombs] to the Ukrainians - report that the LAST working loader broke under the weight of the FAB-1500, heroically loading it onto the Su-34.
1/ Russian veterans of the war in Ukraine have appealed to Vladimir Putin for help against a new and deadlier enemy – their wives, who they say have been corrupted by feminists and "Anglo-Saxons". The men say they have been kicked out "on the street, abandoned and impotent". ⬇️
2/ The 3rd All-Russian Congress of Fathers was held on 15-16 March in Moscow, with 250 participants and several thousand more reportedly watching online. Russian warblogger Sergey Kolyasnikov, author of the 'Zergulius' Telegram channel, writes:
3/ "There have been more and more cases when soldiers who defended their homeland on the front lines are now betrayed on the home front. While they were fighting, their families were destroyed.
1/ Russia's shortage of armoured vehicles and lack of an analogue for the M113 APC or M2A2 Bradley IFV has led soldiers to weld troop-carrying 'booths' onto rusting Soviet-era MT-LB armoured fighting vehicles. It highlights the Russian defence industry's failure to adapt. ⬇️
2/ The MT-LB, built in Ukraine, Bulgaria and Poland from the early 1970s, is designed to carry 11 men in addition to a driver and gunner. However, like other Soviet-era APCs, it suffers from low headroom and narrow exit doors which slow down disembarcation from the vehicle.
3/ This has often been a problem for Russian forces in Ukraine, as it leaves disembarking troops highly vulnerable to enemy fire. In one incident recorded by the Ukrainians, an entire Russian assault squad was wiped out in seconds as it exited its MT-LB.
1/ Ivan Popov, the former general who commanded the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army until July 2023, has written an 'appeal to the Tsar' asking Vladimir Putin to release him from detention so that he can "to continue to crush the enemy in accordance with the oath I took." ⬇️
2/ Popov commanded the 58th Army until he was dismissed in July 2023 after a furious argument with the head of Russia's armed forces, General Valery Gerasimov, over the Russian army's poor performance in Ukraine.
3/ Popov was arrested on 17 May 2024 on fraud charges. Unlike the arrests of many other senior officers, Popov's arrest has been controversial, as he was a popular and well-regarded commander. His cause has been championed by a number of Russian warbloggers.