“This is our cursed army” – Russian soldiers complain about situation in the field China’s secret police stations also exist in Europe – and they are very active

Russian partial mobilization has ended. The Ministry of Defense announced this in Moscow on Monday. Sergei Shoigu commented on this on Friday. The defense minister said 300,000 people had been called up. 82,000 are already deployed at the front. The rest are still being trained.

Russia began its partial mobilization on September 21. Calling up the reservists was sometimes chaotic. For example, there was not enough equipment or the wrong people were called to the service. Vladimir Putin also admitted that not everything went smoothly. There were difficulties and mistakes in the first phase, he said, according to the Ria Novosti news agency.

These were inevitable, however, as the last partial mobilization was a long time ago. It is now important “to draw the necessary conclusions to modernize the entire working system of the military registration and recruitment offices”.

Shoigu said problems only arose during the first phase of the mobilization. Those have now been rectified.

Putin and his defense minister were recently photographed shaking hands with well-equipped soldiers at a training ground.

However, the reality at the front sometimes looks very different. Several videos released in recent days indicate that the Russian fighters are fighting for their lives under the most adverse conditions.

bad equipment

Many soldiers can only dream of good equipment that protects them from rain and low temperatures. “We were sent here with no training and nothing,” complains a company commander in a forested sector of the front. ‘People wear their own uniform. We had to buy everything ourselves.” A comrade adds: “We don’t have any warm underwear. We’re just standing here with pants.”

Otherwise, the organization of this unit seems miserable. “No weapons, no ammunition, no grenades, no food, no water. It’s a disaster,” said one fighter.

This is not an isolated case. Across the country, the mobilized men would buy their own equipment, writes The Guardian. The news circulated that the army was unable to equip the soldiers adequately. Demand for sleeping bags, boots and outdoor clothing has increased dramatically across Russia. The price of bulletproof vests has risen by 500 percent.

A video is circulating on social media in which a Russian soldier complains that his bulletproof vest is only for airsoft games and offers no protection against real bullets.

“Russia was simply not prepared for a mobilization of this magnitude,” The Guardian quoted independent Russian military expert Pavel Luzin as saying. “When the mobilization was announced, there was no mechanism to actually implement it.”

Sleeping in the cowshed

A battalion from the Russian city of Penza also lives in appalling conditions. As seen on video of a fighter, his unit is stationed in an abandoned cowshed. “Everyone has a cold, everyone is wet,” cursed the Russian. Everything is full of cow dung, the soldiers lay straw on the ground to sleep on. Everything is open, there are no doors and no windows. “There is no place where we can dry ourselves.” The fighter says resignedly, “That’s our cursed army with the mobilized.”

Relatives complain

The men who were conscripted from the city of Serow are also not doing well. They are currently fighting near the Ukrainian city of Lyman. Apparently they miss everything. Relatives of the fighters say in a video that the water and food supply is deplorable. “No food, no water, they have nothing,” complains one woman. There was also no training.

The soldiers have to bury the fallen themselves, they complain. The military would simply declare these people missing. Although the soldiers had a tank at their disposal, it was useless because there was no fuel. A man also claims that the relief supplies did not reach the fighters because the officers put them in their pockets themselves.

Further mobilization wave possible

Despite partial mobilization, Russia has failed to gain ground in Ukraine. In October, the Ukrainians managed to recapture about 2,500 square kilometers. The situation for the soldiers at the front is likely to deteriorate again in the coming months. Especially in eastern Ukraine it gets bitterly cold in winter. Equipment will then play an even more important role.

Still, the researchers at the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) do not assume that Putin will stop fighting. He will continue to let his soldiers fight by conventional means and hope that the West will drop support for Kiev over the winter.

The ISW assumes that Putin will be willing to send ill-equipped fighters to the front for much longer. It is possible that the wave of mobilization that has just ended was not the last.