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3/ "They started firing their obsolete and outdated guns more or less reliably.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/ 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/ 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?"
1/ Russia appears to be running out of surface-to-air missiles, with air defence crews having to be reassigned to the infantry because they have nothing to fire. ⬇️
2/ The Russian military correspondent Maxim Kalashnikov writes that he recently met air defence specialists who had been sent to fight in the infantry after spending the last two years crewing the Soviet-era Buk air defence system.
3/ "Professional air defence specialists in the infantry. Not convicts, not drunks, not ‘Sochi boys’. In other words, not deserters from the army. But in the infantry! Someone has to serve in the infantry too.
1/ Three years on from their mobilisation, surviving Russian 'mobiks' have been speaking of their despair and hopelessness at being forced to serve indefinitely in an increasingly lethal war. "We're not considered human beings; meat shouldn't have an opinion," says one. ⬇️
2/ The Russian independent news outlet Verstka has been speaking to some of the mobilised soldiers who have survived from the original batch of 300,000 men mobilised after September 2022. It has found their morale to be low and the men eager to speak out.
3/ A retired police officer who was mobilised says: "When the draft orders arrived, they told us we'd be guarding warehouses on the border for six months. And we, like idiots, believed them. It's our own fault; it's a harsh lesson. Now I just want to return home alive."
1/ Russian sightseers' lack of self-preservation skills during yesterday's Ukrainian sea drone attack has prompted incredulity from Russian warbloggers. "Deer in T-shirts", says one; another says they think they're "immortals from the MacLeod clan". ⬇️
2/ Ukrainian drones carried out a remarkably bold and apparently successful attack at Tuapse on Russia's Black Sea coast yesterday, striking an oil terminal pier. The attack took place in broad daylight in front of crowds of sightseers, who filmed it with apparent insouciance.
3/ "Apparently, the immortals of the MacLeod clan are gaping in Tuapse while small arms fire is directed at the Ukrainian USV", 'Informant' comments, comparing the onlookers to the hero of the Highlander movies.