Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian soldiers fear punishment if they ask commanders for first aid kits, according to a Russian group providing medical supplies. Troops prefer to "run around the front line without a first aid kit rather than initiate some kind of inspection". ⬇️

https://x.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1841763679554961588

2/ The 'Doctors, You Are Not Alone' Telegram channel reports that it is encountering resistance each time there are discussions about sending first aid kits to the troops fighting in Ukraine. Soldiers fear being sent into assaults as punishment if they ask for aid.

3/ On every occasion, the channel says, "the conversation [between volunteer aid providers and the Russian Ministry of Defence] comes to one thing. 'Give us information about where there are no standard first aid kits, we will check and provide them'."

4/ When volunteers "communicate with fighters and medics, we offer them the following interaction scheme: we report on the situation in their unit to those above ➡️they check there ➡️ if there are no first aid kits for some reason, they supply them in the required quantity."

5/ The volunteers ask for consent from the soldiers to communicate their needs to the command on their behalf. "We ourselves do not pass on the data of the units to anyone without approval, trust in us 'from below' is too important." However, soldiers usually refuse this.

6/ "Do you know how many times we got consent from the fighters? Once. And that one case didn't end very well for the military man :((. So we started hearing the argument 'they'll send us into assaults as soon as we open our mouths' long before it became mainstream.

7/ Hence the fact that it is easier for people to run around the front line without a first aid kit than to initiate some kind of inspection. A bad trend, right?

8/ If there are historians among our readers, tell us about examples when some country won a war in conditions of total distrust of the soldiers in the command. Maybe we will adopt their experience. Sad irony, if anything."

9/ The commentary highlights a number of trends among the Russian forces in Ukraine which have been reported elsewhere. Poor morale appears to be being compensated for by increasingly harsh punishments, especially by sending dissenters into potentially suicidal assaults.

10/ The poor state of Russian battlefield medicine has been remarked upon many times before (see thread below) and has undoubtedly resulted in thousands of men dying from what should have been survivable wounds.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1658813918649647110

11/ These problems appear to be combining, judging by what 'Doctors, You Are Not Alone', says. The result is likely to be that harsh military discipline is undermining voluntary efforts to resolve shortages of medical supplies, resulting in yet more deaths from injuries. /end

Source:
t.me/vrachivyneodni…