1/ Russian kindergarteners in the Krasnodar region have been learning about the joys of trench warfare. Pre-school children wore camouflage, learned how to assemble and disassemble automatic rifles, and sat in an improvised trench dug in their school's lawn. ⬇️
2/ The "Zarnichka-2023" exercise took place at the 'Romashka' kindergarten in Labinsk, a town of around 57,000 people in Russia's far south. The "Not Normal" Telegram channel reports that 84 kindergarteners participated with the aid of Russian army cadets.
3/ According to the channel, "The head of the [district] administration, Vladimir Zaburaev, and the kindergarten teachers happily watched the children playing at killing each other."
4/ "The event programme also included the standard assembly/disassembly of automatic rifles and writing letters to the military at the front."
5/ A press release on VK says that "14 teams of 6 people went through 11 stations, and also attended a variety of interesting master classes, improving their dexterity, accuracy, ability to work in a team and be friendly."
6/ They were accompanied by cadets involved in patriotic clubs in the area. Pre-conscription youth also worked at the stations. The children took part in a number of actions and wrote letters to the soldiers.
7/ "After completing all the stages, the kids tasted the soldiers' porridge with appetite."
8/ The exercise forms part of an ongoing and increasingly intensive effort to militarise Russia's schools, with 'patriotic education' now provided from an early age along with training in militarily useful topics such as drone flying. /end
1/ Russian convicts who signed six-month contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence to fight in Ukraine in exchange for a pardon are dismayed to find that they are now being threatened with death or torture unless they sign new contracts for up to a year. ⬇️
2/ Members of at least two 'Storm Z' assault units have reportedly been taken to the 'Concentration Rehabilitation Centre' in Zaitseve, Luhansk region, and put under pressure to sign a new contract after their six-month contracts expired.
3/ This facility has been used to imprison and torture hundreds of recalcitrant Russian soldiers since at least as early as November 2022. Soldiers have described being starved, interrogated and beaten to persuade them to return to the fight.
1/ After a drunken Russian officer ordered his lightly armed unit into a disastrous assault in which 300 men were lost, the survivors mutinied and refused to carry out further orders. They were reportedly imprisoned in a notorious torture facility. ⬇️
2/ ASTRA reports on the fate of mobilised men from the 12th Guards Tank Regiment (military unit 31985), based in the Moscow region, who were sent into an assault that likely took place around Synkivka near Kupiansk. In a letter sent to military prosecutors, relatives say:
3/ "According to our soldiers, their command in the person of Lieutenant Colonel Mikovson (who was in a drunken state) sent them to carry out the combat mission, carrying only automatic rifles, without support.
1/ Relatives of mobilised Russians from Tatarstan have appealed to the Russian authorities to "follow the orders" of President Putin and Defence Minister Shoigu and stop using their men in assaults in eastern Ukraine, where they say they are suffering huge losses.
2/ The relatives are from Kazan in Tatarstan. According to ASTRA, the men are fighting in the Svatove area of eastern Ukraine, where fierce fighting has been taking place for months.
3/ According to relatives, mobilised men are being used in place of professional soldiers who "abandoned their positions and fled." Now, ASTRA says, "mobilised people without training or uniform are forced to besiege the territories controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces."
@solonko1648, who's a serving Ukrainian soldier, has published an excellent pair of threads in Ukrainian describing how the Russian system of trenches and firing positions works. It's a very helpful insight into why they have been so difficult to overcome.
He focuses on a Russian fortified stronghold between the villages of Robotyne and Novoprokopivka, through which the road from one village to the other runs. Tokmak lies further along the same road, which is currently contested. The following thread translates his description:
By @solonko1648:
This, dear friends, is one of the most difficult strongholds located in the Robotyne-Novoprokopivka area. A complex system of trenches-tunnels, dugouts, firing positions, to which the Russian invaders cling with all their might... 🧵 /1
1/ The Russian government is forecasting that over 100,000 of its soldiers will have died by the end of 2024. The draft budget of the Social Fund of Russia for the next year has enabled independent media to calculate the government's projections for its war losses. ⬇️
3/ Funding for these monthly payments has been increased to 16.335 billion rubles ($167.7 mi), an increase of 3.2 billion rubles ($32.8 m) over 2023. This amounts to enough money to pay monthly compensation for 102,700 people killed in service or who died from their wounds.
3/ Funding for these monthly payments has been increased to 16.335 billion rubles ($167.7 mi), an increase of 3.2 billion rubles ($32.8 m) over 2023. This amounts to enough money to pay monthly compensation for 102,700 people killed in service or who died from their wounds.
1/ Russia's Southern Military District is witnessing an explosion of murders committed by serving soldiers. Cases have increased at a rate that is unprecedented in recent years, up by more than 2,400 per cent in a single year. It's a direct result of the war in Ukraine. ⬇️
2/ Kavkaz.Realii reports that there has been a huge increase in murder cases being heard by the military courts in Rostov and Novocherkassk. In Rostov, the court heard two murder cases in 2015, one in 2018, two in 2021, one in 2022 and 42 by October 2023.
3/ Similarly, in Novocherkassk there was one case in 2012, one in 2014, two in 2015, one in 2022, and 34 since the beginning of 2023.
Interestingly, this surge of murder cases has not been replicated elsewhere.