Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Badly injured Russian soldiers are being denied recuperation and are sent into frontline assaults on canes and crutches. Outraged Russian milbloggers blame field commanders for refusing to allow medical leave, but the blame likely goes much higher. ⬇️

2/ As the video above shows, wounded soldiers who have to rely on crutches and sticks to walk are being used for frontline duty. Ukrainian drone footage shows a Russian stormtrooper who appears to have been killed while attempting to assault Ukrainian positions with a white cane.

3/ Previously, wounded soldiers have made video appeals to Vladimir Putin asking that they be allowed to recover from their wounds. The men in the video below had their crutches taken away after recording this and the speaker was sent to a torture camp.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1808098253008744539

4/ The Russian milblogger Anastasia Kashevarova says that "statements by officials that soldiers are provided with high-quality medical care and rehabilitation everywhere and at every stage do not correspond to the real state of affairs."

5/ Instead, she says, "the situation is deplorable, ill-considered, and harms the combat effectiveness of the army and reduces its offensive capabilities. There is virtually no rehabilitation for servicemen in the country, except for those who have lost an arm or a leg."

6/ Kashevarova describes what happens if a soldier receives a severe or moderate injury, without the loss of a limb, assuming that he is recovered from the battlefield in the first place (many are not):

7/ "1. Evacuation and first aid by a field medical team (if he is lucky enough to be evacuated);

2. Dispatch to a frontline hospital in the DNR/LNR;

8/ "3. Then sent to the hospital in Rostov, to the so-called distribution hub. Here the fighter waits for direction to the final destination – either by plane or by train (the wait is long, Rostov is short-staffed, and the situation leads to complications for the fighters).

9/ "For example, my husband was taken to Moscow on the ambulance, if we had waited another day, he would have lost his leg."

(Similar delays in treatment are likely to have cost the limbs of many Russian soldiers.)

10/ "4. Admission to the final hospital – Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar and so on. Here, after a series of operations and manipulations, as soon as the bones have grown together and the stitches have tightened, the fighter is discharged.

11/ "The discharge summary prescribes 30-40 days of leave.

5. After discharge, the fighter must come directly to the unit to write a report for the required 30-40 days. However, in most cases, the fighter never returns home – the command does not sign the report.

12/ "In the best case, he is in the rear, in the worst case, he can be sent to the assault. This is where the wounded and crippled appear on the front lines."

13/ Kashevarova has previously highlighted examples of this, notably a soldier whom she saw in the Samara region with an external fixator attached to his broken leg. She reported that he was being transported back to Ukraine, clearly without recuperation.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1809510459118154209

14/ Kashevarova says that it is rare for soldiers to be given the required 30-40 days of medical leave. In thousands of cases, soldiers are told that "it is mandatory to go to the unit and there is no turning back."

15/ "A military-medical commission is also conducted in the unit, the expectation of a new operation, planned even in a military hospital, also takes place in the unit, and the soldier may not wait for it, they are not released."

16/ Soldiers themselves say that the outcomes of such commissions is often a mere formality, and men are sent back to the front lines with a missing foot, broken limbs and missing eyes. All that is required to be rated as fit is the ability to carry a rifle.

17/ This is the case even for contract soldiers. It's worse for convicts in Storm V units, who are always sent straight back to the front lines after discharge from hospital. "They have no rights at all, they can be sent to storm on the first day [back]."

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1734140067763859884

18/ According to a leaked order from June 2024, Storm V fighters are prohibited outright from going on medical leave or attending hospitals. Officers are notably unsympathetic towards wounded men: "Fuck you and your fucking splinters!"

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1804940908007133558

19/ Although the Russian government is supposed to be providing rehabilitation for wounded soldiers through the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, Kashevarova says that the organisation tells applicants that only civilians can be rehabilitated.

20/ She comments: "It turns out that rehabilitation is not provided to the military, who need to be restored and sent to the front healthy and fighting. But only to those who will never go to the front. Is our state not interested in strong, tough fighters on the front line?"

21/ "Tell me, what kind of stormtrooper can provide a strongpoint – a cripple on crutches, with an unbending arm, a sick, undertreated [man], or an experienced, restored fighter, with normal health? The answer is obvious.

22/ "So why do we have healthy, huge men in some units and brigades, sitting in the rear, and sending fighters who have just returned from hospitals, who have not even recovered and have not undergone rehabilitation, to the stormtroopers?"

23/ Although Kashevarova blames field commanders, the blame likely goes far higher. Russian units in active frontline areas are expected to carry out relentless attacks on Ukrainian positions with whatever soldiers they may have, no matter how ill-prepared or unhealthy they are.

24/ This has been a continuous tendency throughout the Ukraine war. A particularly vivid example is provided by the story of Russia's repeated attempts to take the small village of Dovhenke in the Kharkiv region, in which hundreds of men died during 2022.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1578535556061233152

25/ Russian field commanders appear to be judged by their superiors not by results, but by the 'fighting spirit' they show in ordering attacks. Even if this results in massive casualties, they are still rewarded.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1830873716047147329

26/ In such circumstances, Russian commanders have no incentive to preserve their men's lives or health. All that matters is that they attack when ordered. For the men, all they can expect is to keep fighting until they lose a limb or die. /end

Source:
t.me/akashevarova/7…