Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ In the second of a pair of videos recorded by a doomed 'Storm Z' squad of Russian convict soldiers before they went on their final assault, two men speak about their experiences on the front line in Ukraine. ⬇️

2/ The first video is summarised in the thread below. It was recorded on 7 April 2023 in an abandoned house in a ruined Ukrainian village near Svatove in eastern Ukraine. The men had only signed up six weeks earlier, but were soon all killed or wounded.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1714555177913450784

3/ The second video is introduced by Alexander Vladimirovich Lokshin from the Leningrad region, call sign 'Little Man'. He was recruited from a prison colony where he was serving an eight-year sentence before signing a military contract on 20 February.

4/ When he got to the front, he found that "they sent me to the trenches in the field with a Kalash against mines, shelling, bombing, a tank. Also sometimes they [the Ukrainians?] send us "bumblebees" [drones]. Horror!"

5/ "We're by ourselves," he says. "There are no weapons," the food is poor and "corpses are not removed." There was no support from artillery or tanks. "They come here, they are bombed, they don’t show their nose here anymore."

6/ "Yes, there are red zones. It’s about a kilometer from here, maybe a little less, for example, about 700 meters. There are several of our positions that are constantly being attacked from that side by tanks.

7/ "There is some kind of biochemical plant in Donetsk, they have an underground city there. There is a lot of technology, it’s all visible, but there’s no way to get there. Everything there needs to be bombed, and we simply hold back the attacks as best we can.

8/ "They give you a few RPGs, bumblebees and that's it. And sit in the trenches. Tanks come every day, mines, shelling from three positions, Grad fire every day, various shrapnel."

9/ "Major Kobaladze [call sign 'Old Man'] is considered to be in charge, but he also has in Donetsk, I understand, a higher authority. We haven't seen any of them, we don't know them. We were brought here by car. It is unclear what to do.

10/ "People are dying every day, maimed. Concussed, with severed limbs, we carried them ourselves, carried them out of the battlefield several times. It's a total ass here. How are we supposed to live? And it is unlikely that we will live to the end of the contract.

11/ "We don't know what to do. We don't know. There are no reinforcements. Those mobilised from here look at the tanks at the very first trench and immediately run away in an unknown direction.

12/ "We can't do that. We have no documents, no dog tags, no military papers. Like no cards, no phones, no SIM cards. We have nothing at all.

13/ "If something just happens to this serviceman, if within a month or two months he will not be in touch and will be, like all the majority here, lying on the field, he wants his brother to receive certain payments that our state is obliged to pay."

14/ The second soldier in the video introduces himself as Maxim Valeryevich Kozlov. He had been serving an 11-year sentence before signing a contract, but like the rest of the men, had not received any documentation.

15/ Kozlov says: "We don’t know how to continue living. You can’t go here, you can’t go there.

16/ "We are most worried not about our lives and the fact that we will die here, but that our relatives will not be provided with financial assistance, since all the guys are lying there, lying missing, and some 'uncle' [senior soldier] is getting money for this.

17/ "We are adults, we understand everything. But this is not war, this is not war when you are bombed from above with everything in a row [in a trench]. And there's no support from our people at all. There's no communication at all. The radio communication is bad.

18/ "Materially, there is no provision whatsoever. There is no food or anything like that.

The most important point is simply that if we really, well, something happens to us, this is the most important thing so that we can shake up this whole situation.

19/ "I repeat once again, we will shoot a video from the front, from the front position, of the guys’ corpses, and so on. You will see all this, all this will be filmed."

20/ The men appear to have never had the chance to do so. They took part in an assault a few days later and never returned. Their relatives have received no compensation. /end

Source:
severreal.org/a/minoborony-z…