wader
Well-Known Angler
'Coffins Are Already Coming': The Toll of Russia's Chaotic Draft
Neil Macfarquhar
Mon, October 17, 2022 at 7:48 AM
A half-dozen Russian soldiers talk about being shipped to an area of intense fighting in eastern Ukraine just 11 days after their mobilization. Asked about his shooting practice, a bearded conscript says, “Once. Three magazines.”
In a town near Yekaterinburg, in central Russia, newly mobilized men march in place in their street clothes. “No machine guns, nothing, no clothes, no shoes,” says an unidentified observer. “Half of them are hungover, old, at risk — the ambulance should be on duty.”
Elsewhere, scores of relatives of freshly drafted Russian soldiers crowd outside a training center, passing items through its fence to the recruits — boots, berets, bulletproof vests, backpacks, sleeping bags, camping mats, medicine, bandages and food.
"This is not how it’s done,” a woman named Elena told the news outlet Samara Online. “We buy everything.”
Despite draconian laws against criticizing the “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russian social media is awash with scenes such as those above captured in widely circulating videos. Such posts are taking the Ministry of Defense to task for acting just as Western military experts predicted: rushing thousands of newly drafted, untrained, ill-equipped soldiers to Ukraine, too desperate to plug holes in its defensive lines to mold the men into cohesive units.
“They are giving them, at best, basics and, at worst, nothing and throwing them into combat, which suggests that these guys are just literally cannon fodder,” said William Alberque, a specialist in the Russian armed forces and the director of the arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research organization based in London.
'Coffins Are Already Coming': The Toll of Russia's Chaotic Draft
A half-dozen Russian soldiers talk about being shipped to an area of intense fighting in eastern Ukraine just 11 days after their mobilization. Asked about his shooting practice, a bearded conscript says, “Once. Three magazines.” In a town near Yekaterinburg, in central Russia, newly mobilized...
