Russia HS visited a military station near Vyborg, where mourning messages from Ukraine are now raining: “They thought they were going to the exercises”

Kamenka

Sunday evening it gets dark in Kaukjärvi or Kamenka in Karelia, 34 kilometers southeast of Vyborg.

The military population of a few thousand inhabitants is quiet. Many of the barracks are dark. In the apartment buildings of the main staff, however, the lights are on here and there.

Kamenka has one of the largest garrisons in the vicinity of Finland. There is the 138th Motorized Infantry Brigade, whose soldiers have been sent to fight in Ukraine.

Kamenka’s residential buildings and even some of the shops are located in a gated and guarded garrison area, to which no outsider is concerned. The brigade’s training areas spread around.

Instead, Kamenka’s tiny market is a civilian area.

“Everyone here has left for Ukraine,” says a man in his fifties who walks into the market and continues his journey.

Kamenkan the brigade has a strength of about 4,000 men and includes, in addition to the infantry, armored forces, artillery, air defense, pioneers, and intelligence and intelligence forces. This is a unit that should be capable of independent military action.

Virtually the entire brigade is not combatable. Apparently, two combat units have been sent to Ukraine, each with maybe 800 men, as well as equipment such as T72-B3 tanks and MTLB crew transports, artillery and rocket launchers.

There is not much information about the activities of the brigade in Ukraine, but according to social media, it would have fought on the Kharkiv front. There are reports of some equipment losses, such as the abandoned Tunguska anti-aircraft armor near Kharkov.

To the market a woman in her thirties steps up, Nadezhda.

“My husband is an officer, a contract soldier,” she says.

“He was sent to exercise in the Belgorod region [Ukrainan Harkovan vastaiselle rajalle]. Now I rarely have a connection with him. ”

Is Nadezhda a man in Ukraine?

“Of course he doesn’t say that on the phone,” Nadežda replies.

He looks worried. How does he react to the war in Ukraine?

“I hope it would end soon. Even better if it had never started. ”

About half of the people asked refuse to answer HS questions because they “don’t know”.

Coming from the market with her preschool daughter Katja corresponds to. She is also the officer’s spouse.

“My husband is wounded in Ukraine and is now lying in the hospital,” she says.

Katja has talked to her husband on the phone. He says the man has been unable to tell just about anything about the circumstances in which the injury occurred.

According to Katja, the man went to the exercises in the beginning of February.

“Yes, everyone knew they were going to Ukraine,” he says.

According to him, the war is justified: Russia was forced to do something about Ukraine.

The following the two women walking on the market are quite the opposite.

“It’s quite deep. Really sad, ”another commented on the war.

Women say their husbands are not on the “thank God” front, but they know many whose men are. Or were.

“My friend’s husband has fallen. The same in that [pienyrityksessä] working Igorin the best guy, ”one of the women tells and points to a company operating in the market area.

Women report shocking figures that it is impossible for HS to confirm. According to them, 270 wounded brigade soldiers would be treated in St. Petersburg and another 80 would be coming to Kamenka. According to the women, these would have been reported in the troop department.

“They didn’t know they were going to go to war, they thought they were going to practice,” one of the women says.

According to official data from the Russian Ministry of Defense, a total of 498 Russians would have been killed in the war in Ukraine. According to US intelligence, Russia’s losses would be about 3,000. According to Ukrainians, Russian troops have had mobile crematoria with them.

There are four prisoners of war serving in Kamenka on the list of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The youngest of them is 19 years old Vadim Vorobjov.

According to Russian law, only contract soldiers can be sent to war, but according to women, “our conscripts serving here” would also have been sent to Ukraine.

St. Petersburg The Military Mothers Association has told Meduza that they have even been contacted by the mothers of conscripts who did not recruit until December and do not know where their sons are. There have also been allegations in public that conscripts have been pressured to sign a mercenary contract.

The mothers of St. Petersburg Soldiers informed HS that it could not comment on the matter to foreign media.

The duo goes to get an interview for Igor, whose boyfriend is dead.

In the meantime, however, a police officer and a man in civilian clothes appear on the scene. Someone has called the police. Possibly a bouncy salesman in the neighboring village of Kamyshkka, or Iivanala, who had previously been asked by the soldiers about HS and had been left with the car’s registration number.

The interrogation at the edge of the market takes less than half an hour. The police are a matter-of-fact, man in civilian clothes prescribing lying to the Western media.

While HS’s permits are in order, the interviews end here. You have to head towards Vyborg. Another option would be to pursue the matter at the police station.

Second The large army unit near Finland, from which troops have been sent to Ukraine to fight, is the 200th Arctic Motorized Infantry Brigade in Petsamo.

Two combat units have also been deployed there, at least in the area between Sumy and Kharkiv.

Their combat success has been catastrophic, according to information from Ukraine. According to unconfirmed sometime, the second department would have been almost completely destroyed.

Dozens of destroyed or abandoned vehicles belonging to the 200th Brigade have been presented in Some: T80-BVM battle tanks, MTLB transport tanks, Grad rocket launchers, Akatsija armored vehicles and anti-aircraft armor.

Defense Forces former intelligence chief Pekka Toveri says Russian forces have acted with the wrong tactics. They have gone to occupy and not to fight.

“The goal of the Russian forces, according to their own doctrine, would be to fight as larger troops, regiments or brigades, whose attack is supported by heavy indirect fire. When they operate as individual battalion combat units on narrow roads, it is easy to make them difficult to operate and cause large losses. ”

Troops from the 61st Marines of the Marines have also been transferred from Petsamo to Ukraine. On Sunday, Ukraine announced the killing of its battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry SafronovIn the Kharkiv region.

The brigade has also reportedly been on warships sailing in the Black Sea.

Instead The 80th Brigade of Alakurt has not been reported to be involved in the war in Ukraine. Russia did not establish an Arctic brigade until 2014.

HS leaves Kamenka after the tracking car. No new lights have been lit in the barracks. There are apparently some young arrivals in the garrison and their trainers.

In the big picture, however, Russia has almost emptied Finland’s neighboring areas of soldiers. While it says it fears Western aggression, it is focusing full force on one neighboring country, Ukraine.