Posted on 10/08/2022 7:21:34 PM PDT by Salohcin
Recently mobilized Russian soldiers are decrying "inhumane" conditions, weapons shortages and mistreatment by officers, according to video published by the independent news website The Insider on Wednesday.
Footage of new recruits sleeping on the floor, being armed with outdated rifles and ordered to source their own supplies appeared almost immediately after President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization last month.
Around 500 troops gathered in western Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border with no training and no knowledge of where they were being deployed, the latest video’s authors said.
“Nobody needs us,” a voice behind the camera, flanked by uniformed soldiers on a train platform, can be heard saying.
“We’ve lived in animal conditions for a week,” the voice said, adding that the soldiers had received no material support or financial compensation since being called up.
“We’ve spent an absurd amount of money just to feed ourselves, not to mention on ammunition.”
The Insider reported earlier that the soldiers’ wives were forced to spend as much as $2,500 on equipping their husbands. A website set up to answer questions on mobilization states that requiring soldiers to buy their own equipment is illegal. The same website encourages soldiers to bring their own night vision goggles and drones to the battlefield.
It was not clear where the mobilized soldiers depicted in the video were ultimately deployed.
Yury Shvytkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma's Defense Committee, said Thursday that he had asked the military prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee to investigate the incident.
Western military analysts have predicted that the Kremlin’s rush to deploy new recruits to the frontlines would result in high death rates, troop unreliability and low morale.
Several recruits were reported to have died before deployment.
Didn't they get all wiped out at the Battle of Hostomel Airport? The idea of the blitzkrieg was sound. The execution of it was poor.
Some of those young Russian wives are hot! I suspect they will be single soon.
Not sure about the wives of Shoigu and Gerasimov, of whether they’re young or not but they’re liable to be single real soon as both of them we’re just canned within the last few hours over the Kerch Bridge Blast.
A battalion of VDV was wiped out at Hostomel and nearby.
There were about four divisions worth of VDV at the time (counting actual divisions, independent brigades and regiments), but these weren’t up to strength. There were probably @35 battalions of VDV in terms of maneuver units in total. Two divisions more or less were deployed on the Kiev axis as mechanized infantry, and these took very heavy casualties, a lot of those photos of smashed columns near Kiev were the VDV. The rest of the VDV was drawn into the Izyum and Severodonetsk and Kherson battles.
There are two divisions of the VDV plus a separate regiment, all very understrength as these were reconstituted units, in the Kherson bridgehead at the moment, IIRC. These are the stiffeners in the Russian lines there.
Again?
Shoigu has been canned, poisoned or dead at least twice this year.
Third time’s a charm! :-)
Nicholas, there’s nothing new under the sun and this doesn’t justify USA citizens paying for the Ukrainians to fight our war.
No.
This is alarming. Globohomo Ukrazis are running the Moscow Times!
“We’ve spent an absurd amount of money just to feed ourselves, not to mention on ammunition.”
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That they have to buy their own ammo says a lot about Russian Army logistics and its attitude toward its forcibly conscripted citizens.
Um; anyone ever heard of American boot camp?
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I guess you’ve never served because even the worst parts of boot camp is nothing like what these forcibly conscripted Russian citizens have to endure.
No one has to buy their own food, and certainly not their ammo - in the West or even in China.
Yes, I have, and comparatively we were better equipped and better fed but that’s not the point at all.
Sorry you missed it.
That was early on - now its different - but still its Big Soviet Union vs Little Soviet Union (but one that is attempting to modernize).
military police that would shoot deserters that left the front
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Now they use Chechens who are not good for much else.
A lot of us on this forum have lived and been trained in the old WWII barracks in basic and jump school and they seemed fine to us.
Some of us have done a lot of reading about basic in WWII and talked to countless WWII vets and haven’t heard any unusual complaints.
These Russians are not dealing with what Americans trained in.
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