The military draft announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin sent hordes of fearful fighting-age men fleeing for the border, but even they couldn’t have appreciated the true horror of what those unlucky enough to be mobilized and sent to the frontline in Ukraine are having to face.
Reports of drafted Russians being sent to fight with wildly insufficient training and “barely usable” equipment have abounded for weeks, but a new report suggests that recruits are resorting to pretending to be dead in the heat of battle to save their own lives.
Independent Russian outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe spoke to the wives of three men mobilized into Moscow’s 423rd Guards Motor Rifle Regiment at the end of September. The women, whose names have been changed, said their husbands are now facing court martial for leaving the frontline after being deployed into a living nightmare in Ukraine last month.
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The men’s training allegedly consisted of little more than digging trenches at a camp in the forests of Belgorod Oblast in Russia before being transferred to the Luhansk region of Ukraine just two weeks later, on Oct. 14. The recruits were reportedly being commanded by two other mobilized men—neither of whom had combat experience. After their deployment, the troops’ loved ones then didn’t hear from them again until Oct. 26, when the men contacted their wives desperate for help.
One wife of a 24-year-old recruit said her husband’s company had been shelled by artillery for 12 hours, during which one of the commanders was “torn to pieces.” The surviving commander ordered a retreat—only for higher military authorities to command them to turn back to the front. “After they refused to return, they were offered new equipment, bulletproof vests, helmets—or a court martial,” the woman, referred to as “Irina,” said.
She added that her husband, along with 26 other survivors from his company, is now hiding in an abandoned house. “Their bank cards are blocked, they are without a livelihood, without money, without food, without water,” Irina said. “My husband told me that he had not eaten for several days, and we do not know what to do about it.”
Another wife, “Ekaterina,” said her 27-year-old husband was similarly trained only in digging trenches. He was allegedly sent to a section of the front in Ukraine where 76 men had been killed in shelling around two weeks before his arrival.
On Oct. 25, Ekaterina says her husband and his comrades came under a barrage of their own. “For many hours they simply lay on the ground and pretended to be dead for one simple reason: they no longer had any weapons other than machine guns,” Ekaterina said. “And there were mortars against them, drones flew over them, if they even moved a finger, then a drone would immediately fly in and destroy them.”
Reports of the appalling state of the Kremlin’s mobilized forces come after Moscow propagandists encouraged citizens to die horrible deaths for Putin rather than countenance war defeat.
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