Hours after Russia’s Vladimir Putin hailed his mobilization as a resounding success on Friday, humiliating reports emerged that the war effort in Ukraine was more successful in turning the country against him than in defeating the mythical Nazis.
The starkest contrast to the Russian president’s boast came in Kazan, where dozens of conscripted soldiers were filmed on Friday night scolding military leaders outside a gathering place for new recruits.
Angry crowds complained of a 1970s shortage of water, food and “rusty” rifles, which one soldier described as “very dangerous,” local media reported. Interestingly, the military officer who threatened to call riot police did not chase the soldiers.
“What OMON are you threatening us with?” We will now call everyone we know and they will come and beat you all and the riot police,” one of the protesting soldiers replied.
As the officer was forced to retreat, rioting soldiers could be seen shouting “rooster” in the video.
As of Saturday, the local authorities said that the issues raised by the soldiers were “resolved”, Tatar-Inform reports. But anger has flared elsewhere, including in Voronezh, where relatives of conscripts gathered outside the local prosecutor’s office and filmed a video appeal to the governor, asking him to release the recruits from his command.
“They installed it on the first day [the draftees] at the front [in Luhansk]. The command left the battlefield and ran away, saying that they would return soon and bring their belongings to the mobilized troops,” one of the family members said in a video broadcast by the independent publication Verstka.
Within 40 minutes of being dropped onto the battlefield, he said, the leadership did not return, the shelling began, and “the war lasted three days.”
“They did not sleep, did not eat, held the line for three days and did not flee as ordered,” he said.
“Our sons are alive, healthy, and they even tell us on the phone that they are doing their military duty. How are they alive and well when they were all killed there? said another soldier’s mother to Verstka.
According to one of the surviving soldiers, he was killed after more than 500 soldiers in the battalion were abandoned by the command.
In an interview with Verstka, Alexey Agafonov said that his battalion initially had 570 men, but only 29 of them were killed and 12 more were wounded in the fierce fighting outside Makeevka, which was captured by the Russians. Another surviving soldier, Nikolai Voronin, confirmed the heavy losses.
“There were a lot of dead people, they were lying everywhere… They had their arms and legs cut off,” Voronin said, adding that the soldiers were ordered to dig trenches until all hell broke loose, and many of them “were ordered to dig trenches before they finished digging the excess ground.” their own graves.”
“When everything started, the officers ran away immediately,” said Agafonov.
“They show that everything is great on TV, but in reality, here in the Luhansk region, specially mobilized soldiers are thrown to the front, and when we left there, we did not see any officers, and when we turned back, we saw that they were in the third line. “These are only contractors and volunteers, and conscripts are at the front,” he said
At a ceremony in Red Square on Friday, Putin tried to paint a very different picture of his mobilization effort, boasting that thousands had chosen to join as volunteers, resulting in a total of 318,000 new troops, 49,000 of whom had arrived. They were “performing their duties” in military ranks.
“The number of volunteers is not decreasing,” he said in comments reported by RIA Novosti.
“This is a very large number of people [mobilized]. Families, mothers, fathers, children, women remained… Of course, the state is doing everything to support them,” he said.
He further referred to the popular Russian slogan “we will not be left behind” and asserted that this phrase is “not an empty word” and “what is really happening.”
The strongest rebuke to the claim came hours later from a man identified by Ukrainian intelligence as a soldier in Russia’s 752nd Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment based in occupied Donetsk. may avoid paying the payments promised to their families.
It was described by Ukrainian authorities as a phone conversation between a Russian soldier and someone back home.
“They won’t allow 200 people to gather,” the soldier said, using Russian military slang for war casualties. “No body, no work. Could be [they will think the person killed] captured and they can withhold money from their relatives and not pay. Do you get the idea?’
When asked if he himself saw the abandoned corpses, he answered: “Of course.”
“They’re lying everywhere, we can’t pick them up,” he said, not believing his mute interlocutor, asking if the military command treated conscripts the same way.
“People in the entire administration are like that,” he said.
