Although criticism of the war in Ukraine is rarely discussed in Russian public, there are repeated reports of poor morale among Russian troops or inadequate treatment of soldiers at the front. This is reported by the German news platform Münchner Merkur.
A current example of this can be found in an article by the Russian online media Govorit NeMoskva. There, a soldier’s wife reports that some fighters at the front are deliberately injuring themselves to escape combat duty against Ukraine. According to the report, some soldiers are intentionally ‘stretching their hands out of the trench to get injured and be able to recover’. This report was also recently picked up by the Moscow Times and the business magazine Business Insider.
The article quotes the statement of an anonymous Russian woman, whose husband was conscripted into military service during the mobilization in September 2022. He participated in inadequate training from October 2022 and has been in Ukraine since January. The 35-year-old, anonymized in the report as Maxim, was informed at his recruitment that his deployment would last three to four months, a maximum of half a year. Since he is still in action contrary to the promises and has had only one two-week leave from the front since his conscription to the military in October 2023, his wife is now actively supporting a movement that demands the demobilization of the Russian armed forces. Her husband suffers from chronic illnesses and post-traumatic stress disorders.
Image: Kremlin.ru, Vladimir Putin at the site Donguzskij (2015-09-19) 10.jpg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (Image size changed)
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