This is what Putin’s soldiers say – VG

Russia is not only struggling with heavy losses in Ukraine. He tells Russian soldiers and their mothers about threats and violence – and that those who don’t want to fight anymore are locked up.

poll from Levada Independent Center It appears that three out of four Russians support the war. But it is different when the soldiers actually go to war against the Ukrainians.

The Russians support imperialism, the idea of ​​making Russia great again. But when it comes to fighting in a war, very few people would like it. In this sense, it is not surprising that they fled from the front. Professor Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen at Finland’s renowned Aleksanteri Institute for VG says there are motivational problems among soldiers.

The movement, known as “Soldier Mothers”, is constantly receiving inquiries from the soldiers’ relatives. Russian independent media medusaas in May Awarded Fritt Ordhad the opportunity to browse these messages.

Medusa has kept the names and other details secret, out of consideration for the soldiers and the soldier’s mothers’ families and organizations.

The independent Russian media is very important, because it sticks to the facts and, hopefully, is not propaganda. This way we get important information about what is really happening in Russia, says Professor Tynkkynen.

Private Elga Kaminsky tells another independent mediator, Nastoyazhcheje Vremyathat the soldiers “totally lost faith” in the higher officers.

– no trust

– I’m morally exhausted. In a telephone interview with Nastoyashi Vremya, from an unknown place in eastern Ukraine, the soldier says that there is absolutely no trust in the authorities and the higher command.

When asked why, he replied, “Because they ignore everything, they ignore all requests.”

– I miss home. I had a daughter three months ago. I still haven’t seen her.

Kaminskij is said to have been one of 78 soldiers of his battalion who refused to fight since the beginning of July. According to Kaminsky, ten soldiers are kept in a garage and fed once a day with commercial porridge.

They will later be transferred to a reserve prison. According to Kaminsky, another group of eight people was taken to an unknown location.

– There are thousands of soldiers who do not want to join. They run away, go to court and hide … Some are brought to trial as escapes from service, says Inna Sangadjieva of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

More concerned with living standards

She says the Putin regime is using propaganda to give the impression that the war – or “special operation” as the president calls it – is more popular than it really is.

– Polls also show that people are more worried that Russia in the future will be a country with a high standard of living than “we should be so big that the world is afraid of us,” continues Sangadzhieva.

also Radio Free Europe Reports say that hundreds, possibly thousands, of Russian soldiers are refusing to fight and demanding to go home or not go to Ukraine.

– In July there were many who refused to take part in hostilities, Medusa wrote in his review of reports from the soldier’s mothers, who also received more and more letters from relatives of soldiers who had been subjected to violence by officers or who had been imprisoned long after submit his resignation.

Medusa also concludes that this summer’s problem is that the controversial Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization apparently controlled by the Kremlin, has interfered with what the regular army is doing. Among other things, soldiers from the Wagner group were entrusted with responsibility for the soldiers who submitted their resignations.

The mother of a soldier from Karachaevo-Cherkessia region complains that her son was mocked and beaten to death after he resigned from the army.

The patient is the pregnant wife of a soldier from the Krasnodar region in southern Russia and needs to give her husband welfare leave to take care of their two children. According to the woman, the man and a number of other soldiers were detained and guarded by the police as a result of applying for leave. The wife of a Chechen soldier also stated that the man had been arrested.

– Delivered

A woman says her husband and two other officers refused to carry out the order – and he later wrote his resignation. Then he was handcuffed to the military police of the “Luhansk People’s Republic” – then he was handed over to the controversial Wagner group. I have since lost contact with him.

The Medusa report contains a number of cases in which soldiers were subjected to violence by officers or fellow soldiers.

Soldiers’ mothers also found instances of ethnic violence in the military, she said.

The mother of a conscript soldier from Sevastopol in the Crimea says that her son is constantly being blackmailed. Another mother – to a soldier from the St. Petersburg region – says that her son was captured by soldiers from Dagestan (Caucasus) and demanded alcohol and mobile phones.

Otherwise, they would beat him until he almost died.

– hitting with a racket

A young soldier writes to his mother that he will cut himself, because it is “impossible to bear”. It tells of a banner hitting the soldiers with a bat.

There are also a number of examples of what happens to those who refuse to fight. The wife of a soldier from Karachaevo-Cherkessia claims that only six men survived out of a total of 300 in the man’s battalion. They were to be sent back to the war zone, but they refused.

According to his wife, the leaders called them “escapers” and were locked in a cellar in the “People’s Republic” in Donetsk. Under pressure, they agreed to go where they were sent.

Soldier wrote the book

Paratrooper Pavel Filiev made a promise to himself while under fire from Ukrainian artillery: “Oh my God, if I survived, I would do anything to change this.”.

He published some kind of book On the Russian variant of Facebook, called Vkontakt.

Two months of mud, hunger, cold, sweat and a feeling of death. It’s a shame they don’t allow journalists to get to the front lines. Filatzhev wrote in something reminiscent of memoirs, because Russians should not see themselves as dirty, skinny and bitter.

He was on exercise in Crimea when the war began. His battalion was sent against Kherson, which was captured by the Russians just over a week after the war. Filatgev describes soldiers who were already so tired and cold beforehand that they did not need an enemy.

“Half of my fellow soldiers wear Ukrainian uniforms, because they have better quality and are more comfortable to wear,” he wrote.

Filativ says he had no idea they were going to wage war against Ukraine, and that he was awakened by artillery fire, wounding and killing fellow soldiers on February 24. He also writes about officers who had no idea what was happening, but shot civilians anyway. A mother and several children sat in a car they shot at. Only one child survived.

The ex-soldier violates the new laws and “disfigures” the armed forces, spreads “false information” about the security of Russia, commits “treason”. The crimes could have resulted in a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The first time after the text was published, he lived in different places at night, and then he found no other way out than to flee Russia, he writes. Le Monde.

on me Youtube Filativ posted a video of him destroying his Russian passport, and now he is seeking asylum in France.

– He’s angry

– Filatjev’s interesting notes. He believes that at least 20 percent of soldiers have escaped, Mette Skak, a lecturer at Aarhus University, tells VG.

“It’s hard to see anything but that resistance and frustration with the war will grow when Ukraine, through its professional war, hits more soldiers, ammunition depots, and supply lines,” Skak continues.

The anger that Putin is eliminating a generation of young people can be very dangerous for the president. Although it is happening at a slow pace, we know there is a lot of anger, despite the fact that it has not yet emerged from the large demonstrations, says the Danish expert in Russia.