Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ At least one in ten Russian soldiers in Ukraine is reported to be using drugs, with a network of dealers and couriers supplying narcotics directly to the front lines. The Russian military is well aware of the problem but does not seem to be doing much about it. ⬇️

2/ Verstka reports on how Russia's army in Ukraine is hooked on a variety of drugs, including cannabis, 'bath salt' (alpha-PVP, also known as flakka in the West), methedrone and amphetamines. Soldiers say that they are easy to obtain: "it's just like Las Vegas," says one.

3/ "They use it out of boredom," says one soldier. "War is when you're always waiting for something, occasionally praying for it to go away. When I was smoking salt in the dugout, I didn't give a fuck about possible betrayal [paranoia]. Boredom is much worse."

4/ Many soldiers use cannabis with the full awareness of their comrades, and even of their commanders, who are said to pay little attention to it. A soldier says: "I blew grass a couple of times. Nothing particularly interesting, I blew it and lay down to watch a movie."

5/ Everyone knows if you use drugs in the trenches, of course the dugout is small. Nobody gives a fuck, the main thing is don’t bother anyone. Just don’t leave the dugout."

For thousands of Russian soldiers in the rear, there is little to do other than consume drugs.

6/ "Now, for example, we have a rear camp. Except for rollcalls and routine, in general, nothing happens. There are tasks, of course, that I can’t tell you about. But we are not stormtroopers. So you understand, I’ve only fired shots here twice since March 2022."

7/ Others use drugs to try to make army rations more palatable. "Under the influence of salt it even seemed tasty. Oh horror, even army cigarettes were quite good, though when sober it was better to pick sunflowers from a minefield and smoke them – it was more useful."

8/ "As for the effect of salt - it makes you want to talk and get stuck. Vodka doesn't take at all, you drink it like water."

Professional soldiers are said to be less prone to drug abuse than the mobilised, who have in many cases brought existing drug addictions with them.

9/ "Yes, everyone who screwed up in civilian life, they screw up here too,” says a contract soldier. "The mobiks are fucked up. They collect drug packages, cut them down through local dealers, and even use 'squatter' [wild hemp] found somewhere.

10/ "Of our two hundred special forces employees, only three use. And no one knows about it. Well, almost no one. All the boys here are athletic and healthy. They won't understand. And bullshit is not accepted here."

11/ The soldier says that "there are tons of options here" for using drugs. "Go to the woods, at night in your outfit, in the hut. We rented apartments in a couple of places, but didn’t live in the right place." Around 10-15% of soldiers are said to be drug users.

12/ An Airborne Forces officer comments that "when we entered the mobik positions, they always had water bottles standing around [for drug use]. Well, all sorts of holey bottles with foil. But among us – professional military men – I have never seen anything like this.

13/ "And I have never heard or seen anyone using chemical drugs."

The drugs are supplied, and often made, by Ukrainians living in the occupied territories. Couriers will even bring them to the front lines, though they charge high prices in view of the risk of being attacked.

14/ Some Ukrainians have taken to growing poppies and cannabis on their land to supply the occupiers with drugs. As one contract soldier says, "When we see such courtyards during clean-up [operations], we burn everything there at once."

15/ "The neighbours of the man whose entire garden we burned last time told us that before the war he did not have such a field. And when the Russians came, he put it on stream, and demand appeared."

16/ A steady flow of drugs also enters the occupied territories from Ukraine, some of it couriered by soldiers returning from leave, by visiting relatives, or by those volunteering to bring 'humanitarian aid' to the troops. Professional drug dealers are also active.

17/ Since April 2022, says one addict, "various classes of dealers from Crimea, Krasnodar and mountainous regions [of Russia] have entered the Kherson region" to supply drugs. They take payment electronically using the Mir payment cards issued to the Russian military.

18/ In some occupied areas, soldiers themselves took over existing Ukrainian drug networks. A Kherson resident says that "men in uniform", reportedly from the Airborne Forces (VDV), "squeezed drugs from a local dealer."

19/ "They tortured him to hand over the supply channels so that they could trade themselves . He doesn't say what exactly he told them. But they broke his ribs and his arms and legs, took away his jeep and threw him out onto the street to die."

20/ Drug prices in the occupied territories are very high – at least two and a half times higher than in Russia itself. According to one addict, prices jumped more than sixfold after the invasion in February 2022.

21/ Dealers advertise openly online, through closed Telegram channels, and even through telephone numbers spray-painted on the walls of buildings. They make drugs into packages called 'bookmarks' and hide them, with the location texted to the buyer for them to collect discreetly.

22/ In the Donetsk and Luhansk 'People's Republics', which have been run for years as criminal enterprises, illegal and pharmaceutical drugs are widely available. Pharmacists often sell powerful prescription drugs, such as the barbiturates Lyrica and Tropica, under the counter.

23/ A soldier recalls: "When we were in Luhansk, we crossed paths with Chechens there, and they took all the Lyrica out of pharmacies. And then they sat in clubs in their uniforms getting fucked up."

24/ Although drug dealers and soldiers couriering drugs have been arrested, there is only weak enforcement of prohibitions against drugs. As one soldier comments, "no one checks the stormtroopers so much. You can’t crawl under Bakhmut with a jar and tests..."

25/ "After a colleague was caught injecting his legs, no checks were carried out on the others," a contract soldier from near Kherson says. "No one here gives a shit, to be honest." However, those who are caught red-handed are sentenced to serve in a Storm Z penal battalion.

26/ Storm Z units have suffered huge casualties, so being sent to one amounts to a death sentence. "People there are always on the front line and taking fire. They are 95 per cent kamikazes there," one soldier comments."

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1678367921989353472

27/ As one soldier puts it, Storm Z is "a battalion for junkies, where you go for getting drunk, for beating [someone] up, for hooliganism – for everything you get sentences for in the civilian world."

28/ "Here we have guys who brought girls directly to their positions. So 15 people went to Storm immediately afterwards".

29/ Although Russian military courts have dealt with hundreds of cases of drug use, commanders often bypass the military justice system and carry out sentence themselves. "Let’s be honest, no one needs a brouhaha here, drugs in the battalion are a stain on everyone.

30/ "Nobody needs the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee here. And there will be no trial. It’s easier to put them in a pit for two days and write papers saying they are being transferred to Storm. You can’t refuse." /end

Source:
verstka.media/kak-rossiyskie…