Vladimir Putin’s stubbornly continuing his war on Ukraine even after all signs have pointed to continuing disaster for Russia. Nearly all year long, we’ve heard that joining his army (voluntarily or not) is essentially a death sentence, which is why Putin began recruiting from the most hellish prisons before drafting 300,000+ more troops. Ukraine came into mountains of unplanned firepower because Putin’s soldiers had either died or abandoned ship, and the last thing we heard, there were about 8-10 men in companies, which should regularly deploy while at least reaching the 100-man mark.
Now, The Moscow Times has revealed that an elite unit, the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, penned a letter to drag the Russian president for treating them as “cannon fodder.” The letter arrives after the unit lost 300 men within days while launching what they called a “baffling” offensive on a Ukrainian village. The publication notes that even “pro-war reporters” cannot understand why this mission happened, given that Russians were reportedly at a “strategic disadvantage” before launching the assault. Here’s more:
“We lost about 300 men killed, wounded and missing in four days as a result of a ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great commanders’,” the letter said.
It’s grim stuff, given that the loss of life from one mere weekend in Ukraine adds up to more Russian troops lost than during the first Chechen war, way back in the 1990s. This now lends an even more doomed sense of morale for this elite Naval unit, which has been (as Forbes notes) the chief Russian formation in eastern Ukraine since the war began. Putin has insisted that he’s in this to win this, but it ain’t happening.
(Via The Moscow Times & Forbes)