Vladimir Putin is being faced with the threat of mutiny among his troops as they endure the harsh conditions of his war against Ukraine.
Conscripts in the Novosibirsk region of Russia have beggedtheir wives and sisters to protest on their behalf to the president.
In a video obtained by Astra media, a man describes being confronted with below freezing temperatures and little medical assistance or food.
‘It is now -25C. We have to live here, in the ice. At the same time, our leadership intimidates us,’ he said.
Russian troops have complained about freezing temperatures and frostbite (Picture: East2west)
‘They do not provide medical assistance or rations until we move to these positions.
‘We want the military prosecutor, the FSB [security service] and Vladimir Putin in person to consider this video address.’
While the troops see Putin as a benign dictator who it is clear he is using his mobilised men as cannon fodder.
‘We believe that such actions of the command undermine the combat capability of our army. In such conditions men will simply freeze here, and get sick.
‘Who will be fighting? We won’t even be able to fight…Commanders inform us that they run out of supplies…
‘They tell us directly that the money [for fighting equipment and rations] was simply stolen. And now they demand we move here….
‘Our company will pass away here, before we even get to meet the enemy.’
Pleading for the help from women in their hometowns, they insisted they were not refusing to fight, but will not ‘go to the front and sit stupidly in the trenches and wait for mortars to arrive’.
‘And now the frost has set in. The temperature outside is -20C to -25C… So all hope is on you, wives, sisters. Spread this information as much as possible…
‘We have very little time. Our only hope is you.’
The troops said they have little medical assistance or rations (Picture: social media/e2w)
The men are convinced they will come in Soviet jargon Load 200 – dead – or 300, wounded.
In a plaintive video, they said: ‘These are mobilised men from the Novosibirsk region in the war zone.
‘They send us straight to the front line, they take us out of there by two methods, either load 200 [dead] or 300 [wounded].
‘There’s nothing we can all do here. Men are sitting in the trenches, just sitting for months…waiting for shelling.’
In another video, men from the 428th regiment in the Republic of Bashkortostan say they are facing 300 strikes a day with no military training.
They said they are being forced to buy their own military equipment and food, and have to pay themselves for vehicles to remove dead and wounded comrades.
‘We were drafted on 26 September 2022. From the very beginning, we were told our task [was] to protect facilities in the liberated territories,’ the men said.
‘We had no proper military training… We have paid for our own means of communication and surveillance. And we paid for vehicles to remove the wounded and killed.
‘We [face] more than 300 strikes a day on our positions. We had two killed, more than a dozen wounded.’
The soldiers asked the combat missions and deployment positions be reviewed as, during mobilisation, they were called up for territorial defence and not to fight on the frontline.
SOURCE: metro.co.uk
