Half a dozen Russian soldiers speak of being deployed to a heavily-armed area in eastern Ukraine just 11 days after being mobilized. When asked about his shooting practice, a bearded conscript said, “Once. Three magazines. “
In a town near Yekaterinburg, central Russia, newly mobilized men marched on the spot in street clothes. An unnamed observer said: “No machine gun, nothing, no clothes, no shoes. “Half of them are hangovers, old and weak, at risk – the ambulance should be on duty.”
Elsewhere, scores of relatives of newly enlisted Russian soldiers gathered outside a training center, passing supplies over its fence to recruits – boots, berets, bulletproof vests, three bags, sleeping bags, camping mats, medicine, bandages and food.
Despite draconian laws against criticizing “special military operations” in Ukraine, Russian social media is flooded with scenes like these captured in widely circulated videos. Such positions are making the Ministry of Defense tasked with acting as predicted by Western military experts: sending thousands of newly enlisted, untrained, ill-equipped soldiers to Ukraine, too. desperate to close the holes in their defenses to turn these men into cohesive units. .
William Alberque, an expert in the Russian armed forces and director of the arms control program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.
An extreme sign of disorder occurred on Saturday, when two men from a former Soviet Union country opened fire on a Russian training camp. They killed 11 volunteers and wounded 15 before being shot dead, Russian media outlets reported.
Military analysts say the Russian military is struggling to balance two goals: deploying enough troops to halt Ukraine’s recent advances while rebuilding ground forces that have been decimated in the past. eight months of war.
Inevitably, several managers were killed or arrested, sparking ever sharper criticism of the mobilization effort announced on September 21 and seen as a disturbance. right from the start.
In theory, the draft is for men in the reserve with military skills in need of a refresher, but in practice it appeals to almost anyone, critics say.
Anastasia Kashevarova, a pro-war military blogger, “The result of mobilization is that untrained people are sent to the front lines. wrote in an angry postone of many such aspects.
“Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Moscow – the zinc coffins have arrived,” she added. “You told us there would be training, that they wouldn’t be sent to the front lines for a week. Lie again? “
So far, the Kremlin has tolerated criticism of the war’s conduct, while imprisoning or fines those who question any need for invasion. However, last week was also widely suggested that it should also take down military critics.
On Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin confirmed at a press conference that 16,000 recruits have been deployed to combat units, some with only five to 10 days of training. He added that recruits were needed, as the front in Ukraine spanned nearly 700 miles, adding that training would continue there.
The evidence of the lack of training is anecdotal, but the sheer number of videos from all over Russia, along with scattered threats from managers to attack the conditions, news reports and commentary Others have emphasized the depth of the problem.
In a widely circulated video, a recruit from Moscow assigned to the 1st Tank Regiment – a unit that had been hit hard at the outset of the invasion – said that the regimental commander had informed that there would be no shooting practice or even theoretical training before these men were deployed.
Another video was shown a group of about 500 tangled men, most of their faces covered by headbands, while standing on a train in the Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine. The narrator says they were not assigned to specific units, lived in “inhumane conditions” for a week, had to buy their own food and lacked ammunition.
Belgorod authorities announced that most of the men would be sent back to central Russia for further training. Even the governor of the neighboring Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, criticized the training conditions. He described dilapidated canteen buildings, rusted or broken bathrooms and a lack of beds and uniforms. “In some places it’s okay, and in some places it’s horrible,” he said on social media.
On Thursday, another government, Chelyabinsk, was among the first to officially announce the deaths of untrained soldiers, with five killed in eastern Ukraine. The statement did not detail the situation, but Russia’s BBC quoted friends and relatives of the men as saying they were deployed “like meat” with no combat training.
Similarly, the 28-year-old head of the Moscow city government, Aleksei Martynov, who lacks combat experience, killed in Ukraine just a few days after being mobilized, Natalya Loseva, a journalist for the state TV channel RT, reported on Telegram. Her report could not be independently verified.
“The Russian military leadership is continuing to compromise on future force reconstruction by prioritizing the immediate mobilization of as many agencies as possible,” said the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. ongoing fighting in Ukraine,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a recent review. A report from the British Ministry of Defense endorsed that assessment, stating, “The failure of the Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering indicates poor training and the extent to which their low fighting discipline.”
It’s no surprise that Russian officials are looking to make a positive move for the call. Russian Defense Minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, announced that 200,000 recruits are preparing at about 80 training grounds and six educational centers. Putin called for a halt to the unpopular campaign, saying that 220,000 conscripts would be enough, instead of the initially announced target of 300,000.
The number of Russian troops in Ukraine remains murky. An estimated 200,000 troops were deployed for the invasion, but Western intelligence agencies say anywhere from a third to half were killed or wounded.
The Ministry of Defense has released a series of videos showing happy “mobiks”, as recruits are known in Russian slang, learning to shoot, attack tanks, tie a garo, plant mines and do military missions. other.
“Overall, the personnel are fully equipped, ready for combat operations and eager to join the ranks of combat units and destroy the enemy,” said one soldier, who was only identified by his name. , Magomed, said in a video from the Ministry of Defense was shot at a training ground somewhere in or near eastern Ukraine.
The injection of hundreds of thousands of authorized troops may thwart Ukraine’s advances in the short term, but military analysts say Russia will struggle to reverse its fortunes in the coming months. “The Russians will have to make a choice – build a suitable unit over time and then risk losing the war, or use that unit right away,” said Johan Norberg, a Russia analyst. now because the war requires it, but the unit will be half ready.” at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
Russian lines in eastern Ukraine have repeatedly collapsed under the attack of better trained, better motivated soldiers. Analysts say the Russian military lacks clearly cohesive units where infantry, artillery and air forces are trained to work together.
Andrei Gurulev, a staunch deputy minister in the federal parliament and a senior official in the reserve force, wrote on Telegram that it will take at least a month or two before Russia can deploy trained units. training. Others assume it will take until winter. Some Russian military officers are being released soon to become an officer, Reported by the General Staff of Ukraine.
The Soviet Union maintained a permanent military training infrastructure, which was dismantled after its collapse in 1991. At the beginning of the war, military trainers were moved to Ukraine, leaving units struggling to fill the void with veterans or teachers from military academies.
“They have lost a lot of military experts,” said Gleb Irisov, a former soldier with the Russian Air Force and a former analyst with the state news agency TASS. “There’s no one to train these new people.”
Even before the war, Irisov and others note that Russia struggled to train two classes of conscripts of about 100,000 each spring and fall, with reports of problems such as sick army.
“The military training system is very weak and has been going that way for a long time,” Mr. Irisov said. Much of the training, he said, only appears on paper. “They can’t do this in peacetime, so in wartime it’s even more difficult.”
Unexpectedly, some of the most concentrated training is taking place in Donbas, a region of eastern Ukraine that has been plagued by war since Russia instigated a separatist movement there in 2014.
Last spring, the men in Donbas were arrested on the streets and sent directly to the front lines. Kirill Mikhailov, a researcher at the Conflict Intelligence Team, an organization founded in Russia, said that amid the carnage, attitudes have changed. Officials in the region, he said, realized that they were “squandering their manpower for little profit,” and so they knew they would need to make better soldiers out of the ranks. Russia is recruited.
However, at the moment, with thousands of new recruits pouring into Ukraine, it seems the Kremlin is emphasizing quantity over quality. Or, as Mr. Norberg put it, quoting a Russian expression, “Not by skill, but by numbers.”
Oleg Matsnev contribution report.
