29/ MISTREATMENT: Russia's soldiers in Ukraine work under contracts – under the current peacetime rules, they can quit at any time if they follow certain procedures. But contract soldiers have reported increasingly severe mistreatment as manpower shortages bite.
Full-scale invasion and national resilience, broadcasted live.
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Frontline medical care severely deficient for Russians
25/ Soldiers have reported that frontline medical treatment has been severely deficient, with medics lacking even basics like usable tourniquets and bandages, and with no evacuation. It's likely that many injured Russians have simply bled to death from entirely survivable wounds.
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Satellite images suggest Russian forces thinning on front lines
Available satellite images suggest that Russians indeed have now much less of their forces on the most front positions
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Russian troops exposed in Chernobyl’s Red Forest
24/ Perhaps most infamously, apparently unbriefed Russian troops dug themselves into trenches and dugouts in Chernobyl's Red Forest, the most radioactive area on the planet. They were subsequently reported to have been taken to hospital suffering from radiation exposure.
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Corruption in Russia’s Ukrainian supply chain
Resupply was hindered by severe corruption in the Russian supply chain. One soldier reported: "conscripts who were delivering [food] to our unit in Ukraine stole three crates of canned meat from it and sold them in our unit for 70 rubles each." Packages from home were stolen.
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Deplorable conditions for frontline soldiers
Relatedly, conditions in the field have reportedly been terrible. Soldiers reported not even being given shovels to dig trenches and shelters. They've suffered frostbite and swarms of mosquitoes while living in abject squalor.
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Ancien para dénonce manque d’équipement en Ukraine
16/ For example, the former paratrooper Pavel Filatyev – a member of an elite unit – says that he was sent to Ukraine with a broken machine gun which he had to fix himself, and wasn't given any body armour or infantry gear, which he had to find himself.
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Russian soldiers’ wartime experiences
With that in mind, over the past couple of months I've been covering Russian soldiers' experiences of the war in several threads (see below), using published intercepted phone calls and personal accounts from soldiers and their relatives.
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Ukrainian forces liberate Kharkiv and Kherson regions
Ukrainian troops continue to liberate Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts; Russian forces struck critical civilian infrastructure of Ukraine; the last functioning reactor at Zaporizhzhia NPP has been placed in cold shutdown. Here is our daily highlights selection of the main news for the day
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Ukrainian Offensive in Kharkiv: Significant Russian Equipment Losses and Captures
Since the start of Ukrainian offensive in Kharkiv region, in less then a weak Russian document losses are –
~333 pieces of equipment from which ~224 were captured But remember… NO PANIC!