Comments by "R Johansen" (@rjohansen9486) on "Russian Assault Compels Ukraine To Redeploy Reserves In Hotspot Donetsk; 'New Attack Plan...'" video.
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@JohnAkaSB Russian Soldiers Ask: 'We Have Nothing To Fight With. Why Should We Go Up Against Tanks With Only Machine Guns?'
The video appeared this week on Telegram and other Russian social-media networks: a group of more than two dozen men in masks and camouflage, standing in a snowy field and appealing for help.
"We are the soldiers of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th Platoons, 254th Regiment, 7th Company, 3rd Battalion. Please help us sort out the situation," the soldiers say. "Our commander gave us an order not to retreat from our positions. But the commander gave us no cover and no support. We had only machine guns, and all the rest of the weapons were damaged."
"Now they're accusing us of desertion, since the company commander says he didn't give the order," they said. "In sum, command doesn't care about us."
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@JohnAkaSB In an effort to reverse the military's flagging campaign to pound Ukraine into surrender, the Kremlin in September ordered the call-up of 300,000 men, many of them reservists. In the months prior, Russian authorities had conducted what experts called a "covert mobilization," recruiting volunteers with offers of high salaries.
But Russia's national logistics and recruiting infrastructure was largely unprepared to deal with the influx of troops who needed to be housed, clothed, equipped, and trained before being deployed.
Troops have complained, even before arriving on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, of things like not getting paid, not having enough rations, or merely a lack of discipline and organization among commanders.
"They were sent to the front line with only their naked asses, so to speak, to fight tanks with only machine guns," said Alyona Savochkina, whose husband, Viktor, was one of the soldiers appearing in the video. "Basic kit, grenades. All of them. They had no reinforcements. Nothing."
She says her husband's unit is badly underequipped and underfed. She said they are supplied with food items sent by relatives. "But now they are threatening to deprive them of even this," she said.
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@JohnAkaSB In a report published in November based on Russian media reports, the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S. think tank, said hundreds of soldiers were believed to have deserted and were hiding in at least seven locations in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"The morale and psychological state of Russian forces in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts are exceedingly low," the report said. "Significant losses on the battlefield, mobilization to the front lines without proper training, and poor supplies have led to cases of desertion."
Viktoria, the wife of another soldier who appeared in the video, says her husband, Ivan, was sent to the front line with little or no preparation. After he received his orders to report for duty on October 23, she says they began quickly buying personal equipment for him: clothing, first-aid kits, berets. He was issued a sleeping bag and a uniform at the recruitment office.
Ivan told her that commanders ordered them to start attacks, but Ukrainian artillery opened up, and they ran for 7 kilometers, she says. "'We don't even have anything to defend ourselves with; no equipment, nothing, just the guns in our hands,'" she quoted him as saying.
After that, Viktoria says, the unit began refusing orders to return to the front line. "They want to charge them with desertion for this. And they say: 'We have nothing to fight with. Why should we go up against tanks with only machine guns?'" she said.
"There are quite a lot of guys, and they all seem to be sticking together" as a unit, she said. "But now they are trying to split them up so that they can't resist."
After they were taken out, she said, the unit told its commanders: "We won't go further. It makes no sense for us to go up against tanks with these weapons. What are we, cannon fodder?"
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