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Jul 10 16 tweets 4 min read Read on X
1/ An unusually frank Russian commentary admits that few survive serving in a stormtrooper unit and that "the phrase 'experienced stormtrooper' is an oxymoron". Thousands of deserters are reportedly being punished by being sent to such units as an effective death sentence. ⬇️ Image
2/ The author of the 'Mercenary Ivan Dain' Telegram channel writes: "For almost four years now, the attitude towards stormtroopers has not changed fundamentally."
3/ "Stormtroopers are one of the riskiest specialisms on the line of contact and the chances of seriously doing it for a long time are close to zero. Seriously, I have not met people who have been successfully engaged in stormtrooper work for a long period of time.
4/ "They certainly exist, but their number is vanishingly small. Therefore, the phrase 'experienced stormtrooper' is an oxymoron in my opinion.
5/ "Can anything be done about this situation? The question is open. I do not know of any units that successfully and en masse (I emphasize, en masse) conduct stormtrooper operations and at the same time do not have large losses among stormtroopers.
6/ "There is no one to appeal to here. Even "Wagner" suffered enormous losses during the Bakhmut operation. The only difference between the company and many other units was that these losses produced results.
7/ "And at the moment, the situation with stormtroopers is very simple, anyone who is in the know will confirm this. A person who has been in an assault and survived several attacks, strives to leave for another position one way or another.
8/ "A person who is not in an assault unit is motivated to work, including by the fact that if something happens, he will go to those same "assaults". That's how we live."

Being sent to die in an assault unit has become a standard punishment for desertion, Verstka reports.
9/ According to a source in the military prosecutor's office, in June 2025 fewer than ten soldiers were put under arrest for leaving their units without permission. Many of the rest, numbering more than a thousand in a single month, were sent to stormtrooper units.
10/ The source says: "For going AWOL, they return them to their units, and where it's different - some are immediately taken to the front to be sent to storm, others can be marinated in pits and improvised prisons on the territory of units or commandant's offices."
11/ "They force them to sign an agreement to join a stormtrooper unit or try to sell them to other commanders, who will then throw them into the slaughter in any case."

A frontline source serving in the Kharkiv region corroborates this:
12/ "We have few people running, and those who do are returned and immediately sent into assault. First into a pit, then they fill the hot spots with them.
13/ "From the pit, the military police somehow deliver them to zero [the front line], and there are already barrier detachments there, you can't retreat."

This fate has even befallen men who are not deserters, due to widespread abuse of AWOL status by commanders.
14/ As previously reported, commanders have falsely declared large number of men to be deserters to conceal losses, as a punishment for other forms of misconduct, to extort money from them, or simply because of bureaucratic errors.
15/ In one particularly egregious example, which is reportedly still happening, men who served as volunteers with the 'Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics' and were later discharged have been mistakenly pursued as deserters due to faulty records. /end

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More from @ChrisO_wiki

Jul 12
1/ Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Russian soldiers have been executed by their own side during the war in Ukraine – a practice called "zeroing out" or "resetting to zero". It's not just a disciplinary measure but a reflection of rampant corruption and criminality in the army. ⬇️ Image
2/ The Russian army has always practiced execution of its own men on a far greater scale than any Western military, including that of Nazi Germany. A comparison of military executions in the two World Wars illustrates this point.
3/ World War I:
🔺 United States – 11 men
🔺 Germany - 48
🔺 British Empire – 307
🔺 France – 650
🔺 Austria-Hungary - 1,148
🔺 Russian Empire – 10,000-20,000
Read 38 tweets
Jul 11
1/ A widespread 'collapse' of Russian airports triggered by Ukrainian drones resulted from a cascading series of disruptions. Airports lacked stairs to disembark passengers, aircrew exceeded their regulation hours, and planes ran out of space to park. ⬇️
2/ A Ukrainian drone attack on targets in the Moscow region on 5 July triggered Russia's 'Carpet' plan – when aircraft are grounded until the alert is over. On this occasion, however, it triggered chaos across 10 timezones, costing an estimated 20 billion rubles ($256 million).
3/ Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport was among the worst affected. It was effectively shut down between 5 to 7 July, with thousands of passengers delayed by many hours. The incident shows how Ukraine's attacks can cause huge economic damage even without physically impacting targets.
Read 18 tweets
Jul 10
1/ Soldiers of the Russian 55th Separate Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade say that their unit is a "conveyor belt" of robbery, torture and death. Commanders are said to systematically extort soldiers before sending them to die in assaults, even making them pay to carry weapons. ⬇️ Image
2/ An unnamed soldier who says he has served with the brigade (military unit 55115) since December 2024 has recorded a video appealing to the Russian authorities. He asks them to investigate the personal finances of officers who he says are involved in extortion.
3/ The soldier says that he and his comrades are forced to transfer funds to platoon commanders with the call signs "Physicist" and "Charon", as well as company commander Andrei "Gerych" Gerasimov. Those who refused to pay were "eliminated".
Read 31 tweets
Jul 10
1/ A former Russian police officer who is preparing for his imminent murder in Ukraine has recorded a farewell video explaining the circumstances of his death to his relatives. He says that a Russian major general has ordered that he is to die on the front line. ⬇️
2/ The video features a man named Mark Erikovich Sadykov, who says that because of some unspecified dispute, he was demoted and transferred to the 111th Regiment of the 9th Guards Motorised Rifle Brigade on the orders of "Major General Solovyov".
3/ (This may be a reference to Major General Igor Petrovich Solovyov, an FSB officer who has commanded an FSB special forces unit.)

Sadykov says he was a military police employee for seven years and a graduate of the prestigious Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School.
Read 15 tweets
Jul 9
1/ Russia is reported to be planning a major offensive into the Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions and an offensive against Odesa over the summer, using North Koreans to secure the Russian border. The Russian writer Maxim Kalashnikov calls it "practically fantastical". ⬇️ Image
2/ According to the private Telegram channel Razvedchik ('Scout'), the Russian General Staff has given Vladimir Putin a plan for an offensive "in the second half of the summer" of 2025. The channel reports what its sources say about the proposal:
3/ "They are proposing to release the military for the operation from border protection, and North Korean soldiers are being trained to replace them.
Read 16 tweets
Jul 8
1/ The late Russian transport minister, Roman Starovoit, is reported to have amassed more than 1 billion rubles ($12.7m) worth of property and luxury watches, likely the proceeds of fraud and bribery. More details of his death on Monday have also emerged. ⬇️ Image
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2/ Russian investigators are reported to have discovered that Starovoit, who is said to have been facing imminent indictment and a possible 20-year jail sentence, possessed material wealth far in excess of his ministerial salary.
3/ According to the INSIDER-T Telegram news channel, "His mistress did not want to give the keys to the dacha of the ex-minister who committed suicide, so they had to break down the door. What they saw astonished the security forces."
Read 26 tweets

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