Posted on 10/23/2022 10:45 PM Updated on 10/23/2022 11:41 PM
France 3
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Russia is burying its dead after partial mobilization ordered by Vladimir Putin last month. Testimonies of untrained and unequipped reservists who were sent to the front in Ukraine, where several have already lost their lives.
Under the gray Siberian sky, the grief of a family and an entire village. His name was Nikita Perlin, he died at the front somewhere in Ukraine a few days before his 32nd birthday. He had never fought before. His story is that of hundreds of Russian reservists urgently mobilized in late September on President Putin’s orders. “He was mobilized on September 29. Five days later he was in Ukraine. He died shortly afterwards. We are very angry, there is no preparation for these men. They were sent to Ukraine like cannon fodder,” says Anastasia Kemer, a friend of the Perlin family.
Anger, unwillingly, rushed to war in that far-off plain of Siberia. Four other young reservists from the same district died at the same time as Nikita Perlin. His relatives openly criticized the terms of his mobilization and the confusion of the leadership in announcing his death. “A few days after his arrival in Ukraine, we received news of his death. Then an officer came to tell us it was a mistake and they didn’t know where it was. A week later, the army called his wife to tell her he was indeed dead,” said Maria Martynova, a friend of the Perlin family. According to the Kremlin, 200,000 reservists have reinforced the ranks of the Russian army since the end of September to counter the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the east and south of the country.