The deserter states that commanders prefer to leave the severely wounded to die on the battlefield. He himself had to use a wood-chopping axe to amputate the limbs of wounded soldiers to prevent them from dying of gangrene before evacuation.
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Wounded man left for dead survives three days alone
"I picked up a guy who had been lying there wounded for three days—he’d even burned his own arm and leg. I don’t know how he survived. His arm had already started to rot; necrosis had set in. I asked, ‘What should I do?’"
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Commanders discourage evacuations, threaten execution for desertion.
22/ According to a deserter interviewed earlier this year by the independent Russian publication The Insider, commanders actively discourage evacuation groups and threaten to execute their members if they do not join assault squads.
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Commanders are hostages to flawed, arbitrary military objectives.
19/ "And the commanders are also hostages to all these mistakes, they are given tasks based on the numbers of shells, personnel, occupied territory, available equipment, which are completely sucked out of thin air and passed on to the very top."
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Severe manpower shortage leads to disbanding specialists and engineers for assaults.
18/ "As a result, we have reached such a shortage of people at the front that we disband all the specialists and engineers and send them to assault groups. The wounded sit in the trenches because there is no one to do it.
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Medical delays worsen injuries, turning minor issues into severe ones and increasing losses.
14/ …and abscesses. Where limbs can be saved, the situation drags on so much that a light 300 [wound] or a moderate 300 turns into a heavy 300 or 200 [death] – that is, we are personally increasing irreparable losses.
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Yakut hero: a reluctant destiny born from failure
10/ "No problem, the Yakut is a hero. But he had to become one because of someone's fuck-up. He just wanted to live more than others. And he had no choice but to become a hero.
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Harsh Critique of Delayed Evacuation of Wounded and Media Glorification
'Veterans' Notes' comments: "The wounded man was not evacuated for seventeen days. Bitch, seventeen days! And his comrades died from their wounds without waiting for evacuation, and they will not become the heroes of the media and bloggers' stories. But look, we found a hero!"
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Russian media hails heroism while bloggers report front-line medical failures and suicides
8/ While the official Russian media is hailing Fedorov's ordeal as an example of heroism, Russian bloggers on Telegram are highlighting the failures to provide front-line medical care or evacuation that they say are prompting suicides and soldiers lopping off limbs with axes.
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Soldier amputates own leg with bayonet to avoid pain
6/ Fedorov realised that gangrene had set in and decided that his leg needed to be cut off while his platoon still had a supply of painkillers. However, none of his men wanted to perform the operation. So he did it himself, using a bayonet from his rifle.