Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russia's 810th Marine Brigade is reported to be suffering huge casualties as it attempts to recapture the Kursk region, with a thousand of its men reported missing in October 2024 alone. Commanders are being accused of 'murdering' their troops. ⬇️

2/ One relative says that "It's absolute hell there. Those who are stormtroopers, it's total crap. There are a shitload of dead bodies there, a lot. You can't even help [casualties] ‘cos it's either you or him. They just send them out like meat."

3/ Posts to the Russian social media site VK give an indication of the scale of the losses. Disappearances of men from the 810th Brigade have been mentioned three times as frequently by relatives as those of the next most frequently mentioned brigade, the 155th.

4/ The Russian Army and Ministry of Defence are keeping quiet about the losses. "Why is the unit silent? A thousand people went missing in October, what kind of Bermuda Triangle is this?", a relative asks. She has had no success in getting any information from the authorities.

5/ An injured soldier called Pyotr says the brigade has been in "tough fights ... They are shooting at us with all kinds of weapons."

6/ Another man, Mikhail, says, "There are massive assaults and battles underway in very difficult conditions, the 810th Brigade has suffered hellish losses."

7/ Dozens of men from the brigade, which was stationed in the Kursk region prior to the Ukrianian incursion, were reported missing from villages in the area around Sudzha during the fighting in the days immediately afterwards.

8/ "I don’t understand, did everyone in Pogrebki die or something, from 28 to 31 August, everyone went missing. And this has been going on since August, for the third month they’ve been sending guys to be slaughtered," says a relative whose brother is among the missing.

9/ According to Pyotr, in some places Russian and Ukrainian positions are located only 150 meters (450 feet) from each other. "People are dying equally on both sides," he says.

10/ "They were standing at a distance of 10 to 17 kilometers from the border and neither ours nor the Ukrainians could break through further." Drone strikes are a principal cause of deaths, but evacuation is often impossible.

11/ "Bodies are usually left in place, it is simply impossible to pull them out because they are shooting from grenade launchers, mortars, drones, tanks, everything."

12/ Incompetent commanders who are lying to their superiors are blamed for the high Russian casualty figures. On 7 November, the 810th Brigade tried to break through in the Pogrebki area (shown in the video at the top of this thread). The result was a bloody fiasco.

13/ According to Russian war correspondents, the commanders who ordered the assaults did so after receiving false information about their control of territory. The Russian generals sent the brigade charging into a minefield under Ukrainian fire control – with predictable results.

14/ Russian milbloggers complain that "before the attack, no one even thought about demining the road" and that the 810th Brigade "is sent every day to unprepared assaults, and which is crushed against the staunch defence of the enemy."

15/ The 'Severny Kanal' Telegram channel, which is run by servicemen of the Southern Group of Forces, criticised commanders for the massive casualties. "‘Meat assault’? It's not even that, it’s just the murder of personnel."

16/ "Three days have passed, and still no one has been held accountable for this. Fools in uniform continue to rule the roost in the Special Military Operation command."

They say the lack of any operational plan meant the operation was “doomed to fail” from the start.

17/ According to the channel, more than 30 people were killed and at least another 20 were injured in the failed assault. "Once again, stupid and impudent commanders, eager to report another success to the top, are killing our guys and ruining equipment."

18/ "I emphasise: it was not the enemy who killed them, but these fools in uniform. And if they are not punished, this will continue."

19/ The brigade has a history of taking huge losses during the Ukraine war and of treating its men brutally. It was said to have suffered 85% casualties in fighting in the Kherson region in 2022, after taking heavy losses at Mariupol.

https://x.com/RALee85/status/1569226172717834240

20/ After replenishing its manpower it again suffered heavy casualties in the Zaporizhzhia region during the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, but its men received unsympathetic treatment from their officers.

https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1690093747650842624

21/ There is a steady stream of new arrivals to replace the casualties being sustained by the 810th Brigade. However, soldiers from the brigade say that that Russian forces are having severe problems with communications and navigation.

22/ "There is no connection, the towers are knocked out. There is only communication via radios. And on the Ukrainian side, they have Skylink, ours do not."

Russia seems to have given up on trying to expel the Ukrainians from the Kursk region by the end of 2024.

23/ "There is no talk of us driving the enemy out of Kursk Oblast by the New Year. There is no talk of that, all movement is at a high cost,"  says war correspondent Vladimir Romanov.

Source:
verstka.media/kak-brigada-mo…