‘Some commanders should be shot on the spot’

Barely summoned, already dead. Five Russian soldiers sent to war as part of the mobilization died at the front after just a few days. The Russian authorities admitted this for the first time on Thursday. These are men from the Chelyabinsk region.

This news angers Russian military blogger Anastasia Kashevarowa (34). It is clear to them who is responsible for the deaths of the men. “Some commanders should be shot on the spot,” she wrote on Telegram.

And continues to address the agents in clear terms. “You have no moral right to wear your badges.” Instead, they should be demoted and sent to the front as soldiers themselves. “And whoever distinguishes himself may take command.”

«The zinc coffins have already arrived»

Kashevarova, who used to work as an assistant to the State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin (58), continues to criticize the conditions in the army: “The result of the mobilization: untrained boys are thrown to the front. Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Moscow – the zinc coffins have already arrived.”

The blogger accuses the commanders of lying. “You told us there would be training, that they wouldn’t be sent to the front in a week. Did you lie again?”

She appealed to the military: “Have the courage to admit that this is a war. And to say that everything is missing. Tell the people the truth and that we need help! And not like, ‘Hey, go fight and die! No arguments’.”

Soldiers end up in captivity

Chaos seems to ensue. Men are not used at all according to their qualifications, she accuses those responsible. “Great drone specialists are sent as motorized gunners,” she writes. Because there were no medical examinations, epileptics and autists would be called in, she shouted.

Those in charge didn’t even listen to the superiors on the executive floor. «They are not afraid of Gerasimov (Army Commander Valery Gerasimov Noted. editor), Shoigu (Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu Noted. red), Putin or the prosecutor’s office – in front of anyone. And not all bosses have the moral authority to punish them for being screwed themselves.”

This poor organization leads to the soldiers dying or ending up in Ukrainian captivity. “Of course this is not the case everywhere. But there are many such cases. The mobilized are already in captivity. They are just thrown into the field. So they leave their position, go somewhere and fall into the hands of the enemy.”

New kind of propagandists

Military bloggers like Koshevarova are heard by thousands of people. But war correspondents such as Alexander Kots (44) of the Kremlin-affiliated newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda also belong to a new type of propagandist. Since the outbreak of the war, thousands of people have followed them on Telegram to learn about experiences at the front and assessments of the situation.

Military bloggers and war correspondents alike sometimes position themselves as radical proponents of the war and increasingly allow themselves to criticize the military leadership. After the Ukrainians’ successful counter-offensive in Kharkov, many of them called for a general mobilization and criticized those responsible for their hesitation.

Everyone is to blame, just not Putin

They show loyalty to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin (70) and try to get him out of the line of fire. “Why are the presidential decrees always being sabotaged by the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff?” writes another blogger. And Russia Today boss Margarita Simonyan, 42, recently wrote of those in charge of the military: “They irritate people on purpose and out of malice. As if they had been sent from Kiev.”

Her messages make it clear that everyone is to blame for the situation, except the president. The public and loud criticism of the Russian military leadership and therefore also of the Defense Minister is no coincidence. Experts at the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe that Shoigu is being used as a scapegoat. Putin wants to blame Shoigu for the failure of the invasion of Ukraine.

But the question is whether this plan will backfire for Putin himself. Russian political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov (57), who worked for the think tank Carnegie Moscow Center, says in an interview with “BBC Russia”: “Although Putin is not criticized and perhaps everything is done to protect himself, he seems objectively – because the personalistic nature of the government – also to blame. And its approval ratings have already dropped. Maybe not as much as with the pension reform or the pandemic, but noticeable.”