Russian soldiers complain to Putin about conditions on Ukraine's eastern front

"More than 90% (of the combatants) are seeing a Kalashnikov for the first time," he warns in a video addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a soldier from a pro-Russian regiment fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
08 June 2022 Wednesday 06:07
11 Reads
Russian soldiers complain to Putin about conditions on Ukraine's eastern front

"More than 90% (of the combatants) are seeing a Kalashnikov for the first time," he warns in a video addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a soldier from a pro-Russian regiment fighting in eastern Ukraine. The more than 100 days of invasion and fierce fighting in the Donbass region have worn down the troops, who complain of poor conditions at the front, lack of relief and the recruitment of men unfit to fight.

"Our mobilization was carried out illegally, without medical certification," the soldier from the 107th regiment of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), accompanied by several men, continues in his recording. "More than 70% of those who are here were previously discharged because they physically cannot fight. More than 90% had never fought before. They put us on the front line for three months," lamented the military man. The video was shared in late May by former Russian Federal Security Service officer Igor Girkin on Twitter, a pro-Russian account. "We have lived, forgive me, like vagrants with a machine gun," says the soldier.

In another recording, a soldier from the 113th infantry regiment, deployed in the contact line of the fighting in the Kherson region, also in Donetsk province; joined the complaints directed at Putin. "Our staff have faced hunger and cold. For a significant period, we were without any material, medical or food support."

Some battalions have been holding positions around Kherson, the first major Ukrainian city to fall to the Russian army a few days after the invasion, since the beginning of the war. There the objective is, as far as possible, to continue the offensive towards Mikolaiv, but in recent days there has been a counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops, who have seized territory from the Russians. Pavel K. Baev, a member of the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO), warned a few weeks ago that a more positional type of battle like the one in the Kherson region fuels demoralization among the troops, who receive supplies through a single bridge.

The military deployed in Kherson also asked the Russian leader to investigate his situation on the front, considering the recruitment of men without medical certificates to be illegal. "According to the law of the self-proclaimed RPD, there are people who should not have been mobilized: (...) people with chronic illnesses, people who are guardians (of other people), people with mental illnesses. Considering our long stay without rest on the front line, numerous questions arise that are ignored at the highest command.

There are several reports from western sources that highlight the recruitment problems that the Russian army is having. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) mentions the spokesman for the Military Administration of the Ukrainian region of Odessa, Maksym Marchenko, who stated that between 30 and 40% of the Russian personnel who left Ukraine he refused to return, forcing Russian commanders to send unprepared and unmotivated units back into combat. And recently, the Kremlin has punished generals who sent hundreds of military recruits to fight in a so-called "special military operation."

Another Russian soldier, who survived one of the assaults on the city of Izium, in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, detailed a few days ago that two Russian brigades were practically annihilated after being sent to fight in very precarious conditions and equipped with cell phones. Soviet-era campaign that made communicating with commands difficult.

According to the anonymous military man, who left a message transcribed by Boytsovyi Kot Murz, a Russian pro-war blogger; units of the 64th Brigade, known for allegedly raping and murdering hundreds of civilians in Bucha, and the 38th Brigade, which also withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv to focus its efforts in the east, were responsible for the attack on Izium, but they did not receive shovels to dig trenches.

Russian forces also lacked effective communication with command centers and relied on couriers due to a shortage of encrypted phones. That left them vulnerable to heavy Ukrainian drone fire that turned the battle into what it described as a "meat grinder." The casualties were significant. At the end of the battle, the combined "combat-ready infantry" of the two brigades was less than 100 men, said the Russian soldier in a message that could not be verified by the ISW, although they agree with other information that highlights high you lose in that battle.