Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian soldiers fighting in the Kursk region are brutally beaten by their commanders for getting wounded or losing drones, are denied food, water, and medical treatment for injuries, and are sent into 'meat wave' assaults from which few return. ⬇️

2/ The account of an injured Russian soldier interviewed by The Insider illustrates the Russian experience of the extraordinarily bloody fighting in the Kursk region, in which thousands are likely to have died. The man is a member of the 155th Marine Brigade.

3/ From the start of his arrival in the region in August, the soldier faced arbitrary violence and brutal treatment from his company commander and deputies. "I was forbidden to eat or drink, and I could only sleep with permission, and even then they gave me about three hours.

4/ "You sit down to eat, and they ask you: "What are you doing here, to eat or what? Why did you come here?" – and the beating begins. You sit down to drink tea or water, and immediately they ask: "What are you doing here, to gulp down some water?" – and they beat you again."

5/ He kept himself fed with food looted from the abandoned houses of Russian civilians. "You go in, see that the commander is not there or he is not looking, you dart to the kitchen, and there is some stew – eat it in a second.

6/ "In about twenty seconds you throw it down and go on to do what you need to do. If the commander sees you, you will be in trouble."

7/ After spending some weeks digging trenches and looting houses on the order of his commander, he was told to train as a 'mavist' – a drone operator. "For every mistake, they promised to hit me with a shovel – it was standing at the ready." He was beaten for every drone he lost.

8/ "I would 'take off', look, come back, change the battery – and do it all over again. All this could last up to a day. The commander could afford to go to sleep, eat, sit on the phone, but I was not allowed.

9/ You fly and fly, then they say: "You have four hours to sleep", and I would go, eat first, then sleep, get up and fly again. Sometimes I had to sleep for two hours, sometimes even sitting – everything was in the ground."

10/ From his drone, the man saw soldiers from various Russian units going "for specific "meat assaults" – and [they] died right away. The next day – they went again and died, and so on endlessly."

11/ "I saw that the Ukrainians were giving up their positions, abandoning everything and running, but they were shot. And those who tried to surrender were shot."

12/ He says that he was forced to become a drone operator because the brigade's professional 'mavists' inflicted injuries on themselves when they saw how brutally the commanders treated the men.

13/ "In general, the 155th Brigade has a company of UAV operators, where they train on the Mavic and FPV, but when they come here and see that they are being beaten for any little thing, they try to get wounded and run away as quickly as possible.

14/ "I heard that they even throw grenades under themselves. Someone shoots himself in the leg – everyone has their own way. 300 [wounded] and leave. That's why it got to the point that they put me, untrained, into the crew – no one wants to go to this company."

15/ Because of the frequency of self-inflicted injuries, the man's commanders were hostile and suspicious towards anyone who was injured. He and a comrade were wounded by drones and received beatings as a result, with his comrade suffering broken ribs on top of a leg injury.

16/ After receiving a wound in his shoulder in September, "I was taken back to the command post in Glushkovo, where I was interrogated about how I got it, and held for several days without being given any food or water." He was wounded again the following month.

17/ "I went to my platoon leader, he took me to the company commander, he started beating me, that is, right away, as soon as he saw me, he hit me. Then he stopped, said: "Let's leave the postcard."

18/ We went down to the basement, he took out a gun, loaded it, pointed it at me and said: "Tell me how you were wounded." I tell him, and he says: "You're lying – what "birds" [drones], there are no "birds" there."

19/ "After the interrogation, they took me to a neighboring vegetable garden and threw me into a basement for a day. I lay there without food or water. The next morning they came and said: "Okay, get ready for evacuation."

20/ "But the company commander still didn't believe me and sent a character reference to the unit that I allegedly went 500 [deserted], so that they would open a case against me. I said that I was ready and would tell the investigator everything."

21/ The man was eventually evacuated to a civilian hospital in the Kursk region, but he was one of the lucky ones – many of the wounded were not even treated. "Few made it out, and the survivors were not sent home, but thrown back into the positions.

22/ "And there were seriously wounded - they died right there, because medical care did not reach them. And if a person survived, it meant he continued to serve - someone in the leg, someone in the arm, someone wounded in the stomach."

23/ He is now recovering in hospital and says he won't go back to the fighting. "I'll do my best to ask for a vacation, to get it for myself. I'll negotiate with the doctors so that they write me off, lower my [fitness] category – anything, just not back to this hell." /end

Source:
theins.ru/confession/276…