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3/ "They started firing their obsolete and outdated guns more or less reliably.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.
4/ "And where's the equipment? Where are the self-propelled guns (SPGs) now? Equipment that can't compete with the Western artillery in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in either range or accuracy is rusting somewhere in open storage areas."
5/ "Oh well. Iron is iron. If it breaks, wears out—that's what the defence industry is for, it's supposed to produce new ones. And these new ones would be manned by knowledgeable people with extensive combat experience. You can't just pick up specialists on the street.
6/ "But for some reason, commanders send professional artillerymen to the infantry. That's how we fight."
Kalashnikov reports that gunners being transferred to the infantry is "a fairly widespread phenomenon".
7/ He doesn't say why it is happening, but it's likely to be due to personnel shortages resulting from Russia's huge daily losses on the front lines. He rightly points out the counterproductive nature of this:
8/ "It's a criminal act, because this is how valuable specialists are lost. Considering that the war demonstrated how far we fell behind NATO in artillery (in the 1990s, it leaped ahead, surpassing the USSR's guns in range by one and a half times and in accuracy by…
9/ …an order of magnitude), this practice is doubly criminal. The Ministry of Defence's passivity in taking into account experienced personnel in artillery (as well as in drones) is triply criminal."
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 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.
1/ Tired, depressed, and angry Russian soldiers mobilised in 2022 have been reflecting on their three years at war. "I feel like I'm in The Hunger Games", one remarks. Others speculate that the Russian government wants to exterminate ethnic Russians. ⬇️
2/ Many soldiers don't understand why the war has dragged on for so long and have turned to conspiracy theories to try to explain it. Some blame the Ukrainians, others blame the Russian government, or the West, or Muslim immigrants from Central Asia.
3/ One asks: "With whom are we negotiating peace? With mercenaries? With those who smash markets and civilian homes with HIMARS? Or perhaps with those who glorify the swastika and the ideas of the Third Reich?"