According to Russian military bloggers, Moscow is sending new recruits to the Ukraine war with insufficient training. Apparently, dissatisfaction is growing.
Munich/Donbass/Moscow – It is difficult to keep track of the Ukraine war. As chaotic as the conditions in the Russian invading army are, the mess of news and information is just as tricky. This currently applies in particular to the partial mobilization that Moscow ruler Vladimir Putin ordered in Russia after obvious military failures.
War in Ukraine: Reports of poorly equipped Russian recruits are piling up
Like the British newspaper Financial Times wrote in the middle of the week that the Kremlin had allegedly drafted 200,000 recruits in a secret process since May. Which coincides with reports that young recruits were said to have been among the soldiers killed as early as the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv wanted to prove this with identity documents. However, a number of reports describe how bad the training and equipment of the new Russian soldiers are after the partial mobilization. There is even talk of theft and corruption.
Advisor to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Anton Herashchenko, shared a video on Twitter on Saturday purporting to show the Russian army’s poor equipment. Accordingly, the new Russian soldiers for the Ukraine mission are handed out some rusty weapons and plastic bags. Putin’s spokesman even publicly acknowledged mistakes, suggesting that the Russian people are now following the war more critically. “Indeed, there were cases when the decree was violated,” said Dmitry Peskov.
In the video: Compact – The most important news about the Russia-Ukraine war
However, the effect Moscow wanted on the military struggles fizzled out completely. The Russian army is probably retreating around Cherson in southern Ukraine, and is said to have stopped all attacks in Donbass.
War in Ukraine: Russian army apparently withdraws from Cherson
Meanwhile, Ukraine is expanding its surface-to-air defenses against Russian missiles, for example through the supplied German Iris-T anti-aircraft system. The reports about the bad treatment of the newly drafted recruits – up to 300,000 are said to be there – do not stop. Russian media reported, for example, that five conscripted men from Chelyabinsk had already died in combat – and that only three weeks after the partial mobilization. Because they received insufficient military training?
As the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes in an analysis, so-called military bloggers claim that the number of dead and wounded among the mobilized soldiers is probably higher “because there are promised training, equipment, unit cohesion and Commanders” is missing. It also gives specific examples of alleged failures.
Russian milbloggers claimed that “the commander of the 58th Combined Army of the Southern Military District, Mikhail Zusko, ordered the immediate deployment of newly mobilized soldiers from the 15th Regiment of the 27th Motorized Rifle Brigade from the city of Moscow without any pre-combat training “. According to this information, the new soldiers were sent directly to the collapsing front line around Swatowe on October 2nd and 3rd. The small town is located in the north of Luhansk Oblast, which is the next target of the Ukrainian armed forces after the complete recapture of the Kharkiv region.
Ukraine war: now from soldiers and recruits from Moscow among the losses?
The military bloggers, unnamed in the report, went on to note, according to ISW, that “relatives found half of the 15th Regiment’s personnel wounded in a hospital in Belgorod Oblast after the unit came under heavy artillery fire while attempting to cover the front line of to reach Swatowe”. Are soldiers and recruits from the capital Moscow now also being killed in Putin’s war after the Kremlin chief initially had units sent to Ukraine from distant eastern provinces? Secured identification documents should prove this. In any case, one thing is certain: it will remain a mess. (pm)
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