1/ Six crippled Russian soldiers, some on crutches, are sent to their deaths in Ukraine with three bulletproof vests and two automatic rifles between them. "It's just fucking crazy," says the man filming it, who is now likely missing in action. ⬇️
2/ The video was filmed by 50-year-old Sergei Aleksandrovich Pisarchik, a soldier in the Russian Army's 69th Motorised Rifle Division. He sent it to his relatives on 21 May 2026 and stopped communicating afterwards.
3/ The division was reported to be fighting around Vovchansk north of Kharkiv earlier in the year.
Pisarchik says: "We are going on a combat mission with two assault rifles and three body armours for six of us. We are all cripples. It's just fucking crazy."
4/ His relatives say that he signed a military contract after getting into debt, and was promised a position at a checkpoint inspecting vehicles. Instead, as has happened to many in a similar situation, he was sent to a stormtrooper unit, and likely to his death.
5/ The video highlights how Russia has frequently used badly wounded soldiers as assault troops, denying them medical treatment and sending them into assaults on crutches, or even occasionally in wheelchairs. /end
1/ Russian front-line forces in southern Ukraine face a 'critical' situation with food due to Ukraine's middle-strike drone campaign, warns a prominent Russian warblogger. With starvation becoming a risk, he calls for urgent action against the drones. ⬇️
"The enemy’s intense attacks on our logistics have reached the shores of the Sea of Azov. Ukrainian forces are also carrying out drone strikes using ‘Hornet’ drones on the motorway near Berdyansk."
3/ "The direct distance to Orikhiv is approximately 95 km, so Ukrainian Armed Forces operators have no particular problems covering this distance, given the maximum radius of up to 145 km.
1/ Russia has reportedly effectively privatised its air defence systems, shifting their cost onto regions and private businesses. This is likely resulting in wealthy Moscow getting a disproportionate amount of air defences while poorer regions languish. ⬇️
2/ VChK-OGPU (now restored to Telegram following Pavel Durov's falling-out with the Kremlin) reports that according to a source, "the federal centre has effectively shifted funding for the creation of ever-new air defence lines for Russian cities to the regions…
3/ …(Moscow is no exception). The air defence systems themselves come from the Ministry of Defence (and sometimes their creation is financed by regional budgets), but the expensive preparatory and communications work falls to regional budgets.
1/ How could Russia counter Ukraine's ongoing and increasingly devastating drone campaign against its logistics? One Russian warblogger suggests a possible approach, but another says it won't happen due to the army's systemic deficiencies ⬇️
1/ Russian soldiers who are blind, deaf, have lost limbs, or are in wheelchairs, are having their medical discharges cancelled and are being sent back to Ukraine to fight. It appears to be Russia's latest measure to make up for its huge losses. ⬇️
2/ Seriously injured soldiers with category 'G' status (temporarily unfit for service) are being rounded up at home in Russia and declared fit again by military doctors, before being sent back to war. Relatives say that appeals to the authorities are having no effect.
3/ 38-year-old Pavel Podgrushny from Krasnodar was blown up by a mine in 2024, suffering head and chest injuries and losing his hearing and his left eye. He was treated in Volgograd, discharged to recuperate at home, and given a prosthetic eye.
1/ A leaked order from the Russian army instructs military drivers to disguise their vehicles as civilian ones, repainting them in non-military colours and applying the logos of civilian organisations to their sides. However, this appears to violate the Geneva Conventions. ⬇️
2/ The 'Combat Reserve' Telegram channel has published an extract from the order, which reads:
3/ "3. In view of the enemy’s use of AI-powered strike UAVs, and in order to prevent incidents and avoid the destruction of military equipment during enemy UAV operations, as well as to safeguard the lives and health of service personnel, the formation commander has ordered:
1/ Even as Ukraine invests in accelerating its middle-strike campaign against Russian forces, Russian counter-measures are nowhere to be seen, according to a Russian warblogger and military volunteer. He says that Putin "doesn't give a shit". ⬇️
"The entire route to Crimea, from Taganrog to Chonhar, should have been secured with light air defence – anti-aircraft fire units. It should have been done yesterday. But who is doing this?"
3/ "I recently drove there in a Ural truck to Zaporizhzhia and back: I saw only ‘mushroom clouds’ ahead of me and behind me and heard ‘pops’, but I didn’t see a single anti-aircraft gun or machine-gun crew. So I drove with my pants full of fear. God had mercy on me.