1/ FOOL'S GOLD IN UKRAINE, PART 2: Former Russian soldier Igor S. from Chuvashia was invalided out of the Russian army after sustaining injuries at Chasiv Yar. This thread continues his account of how the riches promised to Russians fighting in Ukraine are illusory. ⬇️
"How did our "Ministry of Finance" work? Very simple: we handed over cards with a PIN code, they were at the base in Berdiansk [in the occupied part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region]."
4/ "All collections for the common fund, for combat, for personal, for everyday life, for transport, gas, petrol, repairs and so on – everything was done through platoon quartermasters. It was written down in notebooks, entered into a table on a tablet.
5/ "And then, if necessary, authorized guys would cash out at ATMs in Berdiansk or Melitopol, pay for purchases by bank transfer. But all this was done through their own people, so there was no deception.
6/ "How much was left on hand after paying all the "taxes" and "utilities"? I had 40-50 thousand [$514-643). Family men, of course, were more frugal, saved on personal things, cut things out, maybe had 70 thousand [$900] for the household. But that's the maximum.
7/ "What we didn't have was corruption and extortion of money by any means, we were really LUCKY here. That is, we didn't give bribes. From stories I know that in other units they paid for everything – for the right to get away to the hospital, for vacation, for flights.
8/ "We had a strict queue for vacations, it was useless to bribe the company commander. If you cut in line, you put yourself in opposition to the team. Not according to the rules. But for delicate issues, there were our own "fixers".
9/ "For example, one signalman on a mission in Mariupol got drunk, got into a fight, lost government property, basically. A real mess. In such cases, the conversation is short: beat them up, go to the basement, from there, get sent to "Storm Z" and forget your name.
10/ "But this kid begged them to sort it out for him. The "fixers" talked it over with the battalion commander, he used his connections higher up, and in the end, the matter was hushed up. They paid everyone – the victim, the military police, the prosecutors.
11/ "I don't know how much it cost the attacker, but it was well over a million [$12,800]. Life is still more expensive.
Is it possible to make money in the Special Military Operation? For me, this is an abstract question, no one asked me if I wanted to fight.
12/ "If they mobilised me, I went. If they didn't mobilise me, I wouldn't have gone. But those who go to war for the long ruble are very wrong in their calculations. Even those who adequately assess the risks think that this risk will be well paid at a fixed rate.
13/ "In fact, when you end up on the line of contact, you pursue only one goal – to survive.
If you end up in a bad unit, where everyone is on their own, you will quickly die. Or shoot yourself to escape this hell.
14/ "But then you will have to give the doctors and special agents everything you have, just so they do not register the suicide [which would deprive your family of compensation payments].
15/ "And in good units, like ours, everything is based on mutual aid and SELF-SUFFICIENCY. Is it possible to refuse to pay "for the common good", not to chip in for combat supplies, for the boiler? I can't say that anyone was forced to do this.
16/ "In war, you are either part of the team, or you will not survive long. And being part of the team at someone else's expense will not work. Our survival rate was much higher than in other units. Although the losses were still considerable.
17/ "From my close circle of twenty people, four guys were 200s [killed] in six months, another five were wounded, someone, like me, is no longer a soldier after that.
18/ "So, calculate for yourself what the “turnover rate” is and what the statistical probability of surviving at least a year at war is.
There are also “expendable” units, which are like a leaky bucket – no matter how you fill it with water, it’s still empty.
19/ "It’s like this: a company is replenished to its regular strength, a month later there is no infantry at all, only commanders, drone operators, signalmen, drivers, mortar men have survived, and not all of them.
20/ "The company is replenished again – it goes into meat assaults over the bodies of its predecessors and burns out completely in a few weeks. There is simply no time to form a stable combat backbone, to establish relationships, there are many deserters and suicides.
21/ "It’s a pity for them, especially when young guys die. They went to war for money and medals – and then it's such a mess.
22/ "I know of one case: a guy of about 20 decided to run away after a week “at zero” [at the front] before his first assault, realizing that it could be his last. So, to teach others a lesson, they caught him, stripped him naked and threw him into a pit.
23/ "They said: if you survive a day, you'll be lucky, we'll give you a chance to atone for your guilt with blood. He survived, but his mind went crazy. What should we do with him? We can't send him home? He'll recover there, and he'll still tell us what's unnecessary.
24/ "So they simply zeroed him out [executed him] – fewer problems.
But let's get back to the money issue. To earn money, you have to stay alive. To survive, you have to invest the money you earn in your survival.
25/ "Then the bottom line will be like me, with fifty [thousand] a month left at best. Now the question: would you go to work in civilian life, say, in a mine under these conditions: no one goes up to the surface, not even the sick.
26/ "The workday is not standardised, someone is constantly being buried, someone suffocates, someone disappears in the adits without a trace. Half the team dies within six months. You live constantly in dirt, cold, hunger, fear. Your death is only a matter of time.
27/ "You are allowed to go home once a year for two weeks. And for all this you are paid 40-50 thousand.
Well, there are no idiots who would sign up for something like that!
28/ "But that's exactly how it is in war, and, I emphasize, that's in the best case scenario, if you end up in a normal unit. And if you end up in a "discharged" unit, you won't even have time to appreciate all the delights of frontline life, because you won't last a week." /end
1/ Russia is reportedly struggling to counter Ukraine's large 'Baba Yaga' drones, which are used at night for mining and resupply missions and now have onboard electronic warfare systems. The Russians have so far failed to create equivalent drones for their own use. ⬇️
2/ Russian warblogger Vladimir Romanov writes that "enemy agro-drones (Baba Yaga) are active in all frontline areas at night.
They drop mines on our positions identified during the day, and conduct logistics to our own hard-to-reach areas."
3/ "We don't have such drones. Attempts to procure and field radio-controlled equivalents have had no real success (in practical combat use). The device is not operational due to active electronic warfare.
1/ A badly injured Russian soldier who has no legs and is unable to walk has been ordered to report for duty in the Russian-occupied city of Alchevsk. It illustrates how the Russian military no longer discharges soldiers even if they have suffered crippling injuries. ⬇️
2/ An unnamed soldier protests in the video above about the treatment of a seriously wounded man who has lost both legs. Despite him being on leave and physically unable to move, he has been ordered to report for duty in Alchevsk. Appeals to military prosecutors have not worked.
3/ The man in the video protests: "They’re dragging him to Alchevsk again, to the unit, fuck it. He’s missing two legs, fuck it, he can’t walk with prosthetics, fuck it."
1/ Russian self-propelled artillery has become increasingly rare on the front lines, due to its vulnerability to longer-ranged Western artillery systems and Ukrainian drone strikes. The gunners have reportedly been transferred to the infantry. ⬇️
2/ Russian war correspondent Maxim Kalashnikov reports:
"I met some guys from a neighboring company. Mobilised, they'd been at the front for over three years. They were in self-propelled artillery. They'd studied the vehicles thoroughly."
3/ "They started firing their obsolete and outdated guns more or less reliably. After all, each of these "pieces of iron" has its own peculiarities that must be taken into account for accurate shooting. So what? Now they're all in the infantry.
1/ Russian soldiers and volunteers bringing 'humanitarian aid' are being systematically robbed at military checkpoints, according to Russian warbloggers. The culprits are the infamously corrupt military police (VP), who confiscate equipment for their own use or to resell. ⬇️
2/ 'Reserve Pioneer' writes of the situation at the checkpoints between Crimea and the occupied southern part of the Kherson region:
3/ "There are a lot of checkpoints on the Kherson border toward the spits, immediately after crossing the border. Deep in the rear (more than 200 km from the line of contact), there are military police, military commandant's offices, or riot police.
1/ A Russian soldier has spoken of hellish conditions on the front line in Ukraine, with no evacuations of the wounded, rotting bodies lying around, no food or water for anybody, no pay, constant Ukrainian drone and mortar attacks, and suicidal orders from corrupt commanders. ⬇️
2/ Vladimir Anatolyevich Oskolkov from the 36th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade (military unit 06705) has recorded four videos from the front line, somewhere around Oleksandrohrad in the Donetsk region. The videos were recorded around 7 August after a failed attack.
3/ He says that his entire platoon was killed, but nobody was evacuating the frontline injured. "They are simply being sent to their deaths. If you get sick or something, they just send you to hell. Our prosecutor's office is completely inactive [regarding appeals for help]."
1/ The Russian authorities reportedly believe that a collision this morning between a fuel train and a truck, which caused a massive fire, may have been sabotage. If so, Ukraine's campaign against Russian fuel supplies may be going beyond drone strikes. ⬇️
2/ The crash happened at 07:26 when an 18-car freight train collided with a truck on the R-120 federal highway at kilometer 439 of the Rudnya-Golynki section of the Moscow Railway in the Rudnyansky District of the Smolensk Region. 16 of the cars overturned and caught fire.
3/ The truck was reported to have crossed the tracks against a red light. The as yet unidentified truck driver died, while the train driver and his assistant were injured but refused hospitalisation. The train was carrying fuel and lubricants, apparently from Belarus.