Putin’s soldiers are dying so quickly. EU punishes Ruag for illegal hand grenade cartel – millions in fines narrowly missed

Russian reservists and volunteers, called up a year ago as part of a partial mobilization, do not survive long. Research by the independent Russian research network ‘Important Stories’ together with the Russian ‘Conflict Intelligence Team’ (CIT) has shown that one in five recruited recruits who died had not even been in service for two months. The youngest soldier was only 19 years old, the oldest was 62 years old.

Russia announced in September 2022 that it would recruit more reservists; a total of 300,000 soldiers were said to have been called up. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet officially declared by decree that this mobilization is over, writes the Moscow Times.

>> All current developments in the live ticker

Russia rarely releases official figures on the number of casualties in the war against Ukraine; last year there was talk of 6,000, reports the Moscow Times. Independent research speaks of between 50,000 and 120,000 deaths. The volunteers from the CIT and ‘Important Stories’ therefore looked at the obituaries in newspapers and other sources. They found numerous obituaries in it. “They all had one thing in common: it took less than a year between enlistment and burial,” the report says. A total of 3,000 deaths were investigated. However, the total number of victims is likely to be significantly higher.

Heavy losses in fighting in Luhansk

In the first month after the partial mobilization, 130 soldiers had already died. On average, the fighters died after 4.5 months. “The most loss-intensive periods were the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2023; they have contributed significantly to the average life expectancy of the people mobilized at the front,” the CIT explains. The fighting along the Svatove-Kreminna line in Luhansk caused particularly high casualties. Ukraine began attacks on the 60-kilometer section of the front in October 2022, which continue to this day. The dead were replaced by recruits, some of whom survived only a few days, according to the report.

Only four soldiers in the investigation report fought for more than eleven months before they were killed. Most of the dead were between 30 and 45 years old, and a third were between 20 and 29 years old.

Young soldier died shortly after TV report

Because the data relates to cases that have been made public, the stories behind the numbers are also known. The youngest soldier, 19-year-old Anton Getman from Rostov, was called up again three months after completing his military service. He was interviewed in a Russian television report and said at the time that he was a volunteer. A short time later he was dead. The oldest man in the report was Major Nikolai Isakov from the Tver region. He was at war for eight months. He died in June in attacks by Russian partisans from the Legion of Freedom of Russia and the Russian Volunteer Corps near Belgorod.

Reports from relatives of those killed also indicate a discrepancy between official figures and what is known in the soldiers’ hometowns. On New Year’s Eve 2023, 139 conscripts from the Samara region alone died in a Ukrainian attack on a Russian camp in Makiivka – the official figure was 89 dead. The Russian Defense Ministry also blamed the soldiers for their deaths because they used mobile phones and thus revealed their whereabouts.

No vacation and complaints about poor equipment

According to the report, at least 40 conscripts were killed in fighting near Bakhmut in the spring and summer of 2023. “They complained that they had no air or artillery support, that communications were virtually non-functional, and that commanders were using the army as cannon fodder,” write the authors of “Important Stories.” A year after the start of the partial mobilization, it is clear that nothing has changed for those called up. “The way they were used is how they will continue to be used,” the CIT wrote. Bad behavior on the part of the commanders, an unstructured combat system, no artillery support – “the systematic problems with the mobilized people persisted.”

Those who were drafted were promised that they could go home after six months. Some hoped for quick money and perhaps a medal. Many have now been deployed for eleven months and have not even been home yet. One reason: “You [die Militärführung] They are afraid that if they send a hundred people on holiday, only half will come back.”