In a dimly lit room, a dozen or so men in Russian military uniforms, their faces concealed by dark balaclavas, stood around a man reading out a letter addressed to President Vladimir Putin. “As of today, we still have not received weapons and ammo,” the man said, identifying his group as soldiers from the 580th Separate howitzer Artillery Division from Serpukhov, a city 62 miles south of Moscow — a unit he said is now stationed in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
“We ask that our guys to be recalled from this assault as they do not possess the necessary training or experience,” the man pleaded, his voice artificially warped to protect his identity. “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, we are asking you to sort out this situation.” This appeal, which appeared this month on Russian Telegram channels, was just one in a flood of new videos that have surfaced since mid-February, in which recent Russian conscripts have complained about how they are being sent to fight and die on the front lines in Ukraine, using phrases such as “criminal orders” and “senseless assaults.”
One Russian media outlet, Vyorstka, calculated that in one month, recruits from at least 16 regions across Russia have appeared in videos appealing for Putin’s intervention.
Imagine thinking that Putin isn't the one doing this to them in the 1st place.
Scores of conscripts say they are being forced to storm Ukrainian positions as part of Russia’s eastern offensive, without sufficient training, ammunition or weapons.
The flurry of videos signals that the problems that plagued Russia’s invasion throughout its first year are far from resolved, and they offer further evidence that Moscow is relying on a grim tactic of sending waves of soldiers to certain death to soften up Ukrainian positions, ahead of sending in elite, experienced fighters to then gain ground.
It is a known Russian tactic now to send convicts and mobiks in human wave attacks throughout the daylight hours to keep a targeted section of the Ukrainian lines under constant attack, then to launch the real, serious attack at night using experienced and well-equipped troops.
It is an effective strategy at creating breakthroughs at least some of the time. Eventually the defenders get worn down and sleep deprived. However, it comes at a price: high casualties among the Russians doomed to attack during the day, who are sacrificed for the benefit of the more experienced troops scheduled to attack at night.
The tactic is even drawing criticism from pro-Russian war bloggers who question its effectiveness and the pointless loss of life in what they call “meat assaults.” Recruits have complained of being handed guns and told to run at enemy positions and shoot. In one video, recorded on March 7, conscripts in a unit from Irkutsk, a city in Siberia, complained that they were “being sent to the slaughter.” The video was their third public appeal to Putin.
While the strategy of sending waves of so-called “shock troops” is not new, it seems to have become more prevalent as Russia has lost some of its initial artillery advantage. The strategy has been a hallmark of the Wagner mercenary group’s months-long assault on Bakhmut.
U.S. officials estimate that the Wagner group alone has lost 30,000 fighters since the start of the invasion, with thousands killed in action in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Russia’s defense ministry claimed last September that just 5,937 soldiers had been killed in the conflict so far. Western governments project about 200,000 killed and wounded on the Russian side.
One group of recruits from Kaliningrad, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, claiming to be to be Unit 41698 of the 5th Motorized Brigade, said that in their first assault six members of the unit had died in a single trench. “People die for nothing,” said one man, his face covered by a balaclava. “We are not meat. We are ready to fight with dignity, not as meat, in frontal attacks.”
Another video, apparently recorded by Regiment 1453 from Perm and the Sverdlovsk region in the Urals on March 11, spoke of “unjustified losses” and said that during a recent assault four had died and 18 were wounded.
The videos have also highlighted Moscow’s failure to address critical and embarrassing supply problems, which have led to arming soldiers with World War II-era guns and uniforms. Some of those complaints were first raised last autumn, including in an initial wave of videos, which began appearing shortly after Russia began a partial military conscription.
“One should not trust the internet completely because it is full of various fake stories, deception and lies,” Putin said. “The internet is rife with information attacks because information is just another offensive weapon in the modern world, and information attacks are just another effective type of struggle.”
Oh don't we know it, Putin, your boys are active enough in this forum. lol
Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in New York, said that it was unsurprising to see such problems after a year of war for which Russia was ill-prepared, and especially after the steep casualties of recent months. “These recruits are serving involuntarily. They are not being trained properly and do not have the right equipment. Russia is clearly using its scarce sources to arm and equip its best units,” Lee said in a phone interview. “The quality of the force is worse now,” Lee said. “Earlier in the war, the big difference was that Russia had a really substantial artillery advantage, which compensated for a lack of tactical competence in some units. Now that artillery advantage has been reduced.”
The conscripts’ appeals have been echoed by mothers and daughters of mobilized fighters who have recorded their own messages to Putin. In one video, published on March 12, about 20 women appealed to Putin and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, to remove their men from the firing line. “Our men are sent in as meat to storm well-defended points, five people against 100 well-armed enemies,” one woman said. “They are ready to honor their duty to the motherland according to the specialization they trained for, not as assault infantry.”
The complaints have also been echoed by Russia’s war bloggers, some of the more vocal critics of the direction of Putin’s war and the ineptitude of the military command. Analysts said that the new complaints about being deployed as untrained stormtroopers could indicate some failure in Russia’s efforts to train thousands of soldiers over the winter.
Things are not going well for Russia in this war. Human wave attacks and treating your own people like cannon fodder is unsustainable both because you'll run out of men, and because all their families will agitate against the war over time until a critical mass is reached and public opinion breaks.
And the small breakthroughs obtained at high cost are worthless, as they don't lead to larger gains or changes to the bigger picture. The line just moves a tiny bit and the process starts over until the Russians become exhausted.
An informed person would not be sure of that as to ANY leaders anywhere in the world, least of all the Russian ones.
Oh, I didn't mean best decision for the Russian soldiers. I meant best decisions for the Russian leaders. They know they have limited quantities of men and they're going to try to win with those men.