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1/ Half of the soldiers from the mobilised "Leningrad Regiment" are said to have been killed fighting near Bakhmut. Survivors say they were given little equipment or ammunition, and have been maltreated by incompetent officers who sent them into deadly positions. ⬇️ 
2/ The regiment (formally the 1486th Motor Rifle Regiment) is one of several that have mostly been recruited from St Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Oblast. It comprises men mobilised from September 2022 onwards, plus volunteers.
3/ According to one of the regiment's members, a man called Dmitry, after mobilisation 1,700 men were sent for two months to a military training camp at Privetninskoye, a village in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad Oblast. Now, he says, "half are no longer alive."
4/ The men's problems began almost immediately. Dmitry says that "at the very beginning, in September, we were given one set of uniforms, a 20-kilogram "Modul" bulletproof vest and an automatic rifle.
5/ "In winter, we were given a home-made Belarusian VKPO (all-season basic uniform). And two months ago – pants and socks. That's all, actually."
6/ The situation with ammunition was equally bad. Dmitry says it was only "issued twice. Once on entry and the second time three months ago." The men have had to rely on "trophy" ammunition captured from the Ukrainians.
7/ Dmitry says that "small arms play no role at all in this war. In winter, we received a DShK [machine gun] on a base from 1943. Can you imagine the Maxim machine gun? Well, just like that, on wooden wheels.
8/ "And it was without a firing pin. The officers found the firing pin somewhere in Russia through their acquaintances and brought it back. They fixed it. We also had one short-wheelbase Ural truck for a battalion of 550 men."
9/ "Everyone's food was bad. One and a half boiled potatoes per soldier – that's probably normal. But it's not the worst problem."
10/ According to Dmitry, although plentiful supplies were promised and appeared to be available, nothing reached the soldiers. "Yes, [supplies] were brought in, at least the warehouses were full, I saw it myself. But why it didn't reach the soldiers is another question."
11/ The men were first deployed to Kupiansk in eastern Ukraine, then to Svatove. In May 2023 they were sent to Soledar. They fought around the Berkhivs'ke reservoir near Bakhmut, then around the outskirts of the destroyed city itself, where they endured terrible conditions.
12/ In June 2023, soldiers from the regiment recorded a video describing the terrible conditions they were experiencing, with little or no ammunition, food or water. The men were also not being rested or rotated.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1674078134692356097
13/ Adding to the men's discontent, public promises of support from St Petersburg politicians were never fulfilled, or were just faked. Local deputies stated that they had provided "hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid" including vehicles, uniforms, binoculars and mine detectors.
14/ A delegation from St Petersburg supposedly visited the war zone earlier this year. However, according to Larisa Lukina, the head of a relatives' group, photographs from the deputies’ trip were actually taken in the Belgorod region of Russia, not in Ukraine.
15/ Dmitry says: "We have never seen anyone from the St Petersburg administration on the front line." According to Lukina, the city leadership "does not react in any way to numerous appeals from the wives and mothers of soldiers".
16/ The 1486th Regiment was used as a reserve for the 1307th Motor Rifle Regiment, which endured equally terrible conditions and huge casualties. The video below from early June illustrates what the soldiers of the 1307th were experiencing then.
https://twitter.com/KrzysztofJano15/status/1666687514327883777
17/ The 1486th then switched to supporting the 98th Airborne Division's 331st Airborne Regiment, who also suffered greatly. Dmitry says that the combat area, which is only about 0.6 square miles (1.5 km²) in size, is littered with the unburied bodies of thousands of Russians.
18/ "The paratroopers shit themselves very badly, but formally they are still working there, although in fact our regiment is there.
19/ "This place, so you know, is not the most pleasant: a square of one and a half by one and a half kilometres, in which almost six thousand people are stacked (killed). Just from the last mobilised regiments.
20/ "Nobody takes the 200s [dead] out from there, because there is simply nowhere to put them. Usually they were taken to Rostov, but now everything is overcrowded there.
21/ Now we have a respite, and only because so-called "Storm" units are being sent to this very problematic place - these are some drunkards and refuseniks brought in from nowhere. So they gathered one hundred military men and periodically throw them on assaults."
22/ The Leningrad Regiment suffered from atrociously bad leadership during this time. A secretly recorded confrontation between men from the regiment and an officer was published in late June.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1674902470135349249
23/ The regiment's colonel, Evgeny Vashunin, was killed on 14 July. Dmitry strongly criticises him for causing the deaths of many of the regiment's men. Another soldier suggests that Vashunin may have been deliberately killed by his own side.
https://twitter.com/KilledInUkraine/status/1683802053758394368
24/ According to the soldier, when the Storm units arrived they were put in positions in front of Wagner troops (nicknamed 'the musicians'), who acted as a Stalin-style 'barrier unit' to shoot retreating Storm members, as well as providing a second line of defence.
25/ "That's why, although the “Stormovites” suffered constant losses (and not small ones), they were afraid to leave their positions. But when the “musicians” left and the “Leningraders” were pulled up to the rear of “Storm”, the prisoners thought that they could rebel here.
26/ "That day the order came to “make some noise.” This is the name given to depicting some kind of vigorous activity, such as preparation for an offensive or reconnaissance in force.
27/ "This is done so that the enemy reveals the positions of his artillery, which we can then attempt to hit with our long-range guns or drones. During such “noisemakers,” losses always occur, and therefore such orders are reluctantly carried out.
28/ "This time too, the Stormtroopers simply refused to carry out the order. But Vashunin couldn’t find anything better than to take a security platoon with him and go deal with the Storm command. He was brought back on a tarpaulin."
29/ "The official account has it that Vashunin was killed by a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group, but the soldier says that there was no offensive Ukrainian activity that day – the clear implication being that the stormtroopers killed him.
30/ They may have had good reason to do so, according to Dmitry's account. "What was happening under him was utter rubbish. That is, the guys were driven without any combat mission, just to be slaughtered in wooded areas.
31/ "At first in platoons, then they realised that this was a lot, so they started to take 15 men each. And the plantation was only between 5 to 30 metres wide – that is, it was impossible to turn around.
32/ "Under artillery, under heavy fire, the guys from the regiment were simply stacked up [killed]. On the front line he behaved as ignorantly as possible.
33/ "By his own stupidity he burned down a staging post, which is now constantly being hit by Ukrainian artillery, and we are suffering losses there. At some point he just took the next people there. Before that, he asked on the radio: was everything calm?
34/ "It was important for him to check in and show that he was in charge. He arrived in the dark in a car with a torch and lights on. And shells immediately flew there. We were lucky that this was a serious fortification and it can't be destroyed just like that."
35/ Many men were injured but, Dmitry says, they have effectively been left in a bureaucratic limbo by the Russian state. "We have wounded men in our battalion who still can't get their injury payments.
36/ "When they go on leave, they don't even have a combat veteran's certificate in their hands, and they can't go to any medical institution, as the law stipulates. Because according to the documents, as they say, "we were not there"." /end
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