Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is fast approaching the one-year mark, and Russian troops aren’t seeing any light at the end of the vodka-soaked tunnel. Recent reports have indicated that soldiers are drunkenly shooting each other on accident, but things must be growing even worse than they already are in Ukraine. Early on after the invasion, leaked audio revealed a mutiny, in which soldiers refused to follow a general’s orders and even threatened to blow him up. Now that even Putin has publicly admitted that he’s failing to supply the basics (on the medical-related and ammunition fronts), the atmosphere has spawned more mayhem.
The Daily Beast now passes on word from a local Russian news site, which revealed how Putin’s massive draft (in which he called up hundreds of thousands of variously ranked troops) led to a deadly altercation between two men. In the end, a commander lost his life after a sergeant got drunk and beat the holy hell out of him. The incident took place on a military train, and the beating was so severed that the “commander was pronounced dead at the scene.” Yikes:
A military court in Magnitogorsk announced Wednesday that the soldier will remain in custody for two months on charges that carry a sentence of up to 15 years, local media reported. The incident occurred last Friday, when investigators say the inebriated staff sergeant attacked his commander, who had also been called up under the Russian president’s order.
Although this report (given that it involves a death en route to the battlefield) stands out, these Russian-on-Russian deaths only appear to be increasing. Business Insider recently reported that Putin’s soldiers are taking each other out at a rate that might even exceed those who are killed by Ukrainian soldiers. The Russian army desertion rate has also grown so high that a commander was reportedly “threatened with execution” because he couldn’t stop his soldiers from fleeing. That’s possibly a natural result of being forced to use degraded ammo that could kill them when fired, along with being told that feminine hygiene supplies are the only available medical supplies. Putin doesn’t appear to be giving up this war anytime soon, though, so we can probably expect similar reports into the new year.
(Via The Daily Beast, Business Insider, & Newsweek)