Russian conscripts resort to “playing dead on the battlefield” when sent to fight in Ukraine with poor equipment and insufficient training.
The wife of a Russian sent to fight in Moscow’s 423rd Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment said her husband and his comrades pretended to be dead as they had only machine guns to defend themselves.
He and others face a court-martial after leaving the front lines in Ukraine.
It comes as antidepressant sales in Russia soared as the pathetic reality of Putin’s war in Ukraine finally dawned on the public, Western officials have said.
Russians spent 70 percent more on the pills in the first eight months of this year compared to last year, despite spending much of 2021 in Covid lockdowns, figures show.
“Russians are scared” as the “catastrophic blunder” of Vladimir Putin’s invasion — including conscription and a flagging economy — begins to hit people’s lives, officials added.
At least 400,000 have fled since Putin announced he would begin conscripting people into the army in September, significantly more than the 300,000 he has enlisted in his ranks.
Russian conscripts resort to “playing dead on the battlefield” when sent to fight in Ukraine with poor equipment and insufficient training. File image of Russian recruits
The wife of a Russian sent into combat said her husband and his comrades pretended to be dead because they only had machine guns to defend themselves. File image of Russian recruits
Ekaterina said her 27-year-old husband was trained as a trench digger before being posted to the front.
She told independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe: “For many hours they just lay on the ground pretending to be dead for one simple reason: they had no weapons other than machine guns.
“There were mortars against them, drones flying over them, if they even lifted a finger, a drone would fly in and destroy them immediately.”
Another woman, Irina, said her husband, 24, was fired upon for 12 hours, with one of his commanders “torn to pieces” by the attack.
She told the Russian news site that the surviving commander ordered a retreat before senior military authorities sent her back to the front lines.
“After refusing to return, they were offered new equipment, bulletproof vests, helmets or a court-martial,” the woman told the news outlet.
Vladimir Putin faces growing dissent at home as Russians dawn on the miserable reality of his war, but there is no prospect of him being replaced, Western officials have said
The mobilization has proved particularly unpopular as around 400,000 Russians are fleeing the country rather than enlisting, while mass protests also erupted (file picture).
“Ukraine will push Russia back to pre-invasion borders by New Year”
Ukraine will push Russia back to its pre-invasion border by the end of the year and retake Crimea next summer, a retired US general has predicted.
Ben Hodges, former commander of US forces in Europe, believes Ukraine can retake thousands of square miles of territory south and east over the next two months before pushing into Crimea – the crown jewel of Putin’s 2014 war.
General Hodges, speaking at a Council on Geostrategy event in Westminster on Monday, admitted his vision was “optimistic” but confidently predicted that “Ukraine will win”.
Officials say there are no signs that Putin has decided to change course in Ukraine and that no one is preparing to replace him.
Now in its ninth month of fighting in Ukraine, Russia has failed to meet one of the military goals Putin set at the start of the war.
The Kremlin thought it was getting embroiled in a simple conflict that would take days to resolve and had “no plan B” on what to do if the war went awry, officials said.
“They still don’t have a plan B,” officials added.
This has led to growing dissent among both the Russian population and the elite pro-Putin elite, which are increasingly willing to publicly express their displeasure.
Russians are not pro-war, officials said, and elites were increasingly concerned about the cost of their businesses, as well as the prospect of their children being called up to fight on the front lines.
This has led to Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, dubbed “Putin’s chef,” publicly criticizing the way the war is being waged – but not Putin himself.
Officials added that there was “no likely prospect of a leadership change” in Russia in the short term – although the upcoming elections in 2024 have been marked as a moment of likely tension.
“He was weakened by this truly catastrophic mistake,” said the Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Russia is now in its ninth month of fighting in Ukraine and “still has no plan B” after the failed lightning strikes on Kyiv, officials said
“We see the Russian military being humiliated on the battlefield by Ukraine. People can see he made a big mistake,” the same official said.
“It has to mean that people are talking more about the succession, they’re talking more about what’s next, they’re imagining an afterlife. But what I’m not doing is implying that it will be anytime soon.’
In an attempt to deflect attention from his own failures, officials said Putin was making increasingly wild and unfounded claims to divert attention.
As examples, they cited threats of a “dirty bomb”, claims that the UK and US had attacked the Nord Stream lines and claims about Liz Truss’s hacked phones.
Russia is also increasingly relying on rocket attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, water supply and cities to break Ukrainian support for the conflict.
But if anything, it appears to have strengthened her resolve, officials said.
The money was to go to their families in the impoverished region of Chuvashia. “It’s clear – we were damn fooled,” said one mutineer when the officer tried to address her concerns
They also revealed that “frequent” talks with Russian counterparts about “serious” peace talks are taking place, although there are no signs of this happening yet.
Moscow faces a dire situation on the battlefields of Ukraine as it tries to defend a hundreds of kilometers long front line with badly battered units in winter.
Kyiv has taken advantage of this fact by launching counterattacks in the north and south that have recaptured large parts of the territory.
In the hope of another breakthrough, the troops continue to laboriously advance towards the city of Kherson and the Luhansk region in the north-west.
But as the ground softens in the fall, these are expected to slow while vehicles get stuck in the mud.
The winter – bitterly cold in Ukraine – is expected to halt advances almost entirely as both sides dug in before renewed fighting in the spring.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian conscripts are expected to arrive in Ukraine during that time to plug holes in the defense line and possibly launch attacks if conditions improve.
However, it remains infinitesimally unlikely that Putin can achieve his original goal of overthrowing the government – and even the reduced goal of “liberating” the Donbass region seems unlikely.