Russia is sending conscripts to Ukraine battle zones, against Russia’s own regulations, as proven by documents captured by Ukraine forces (see attached photo, showing English translation provided by Google Lens) and released on the Facebook page of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Additional captured documents indicate that Russia is unable to pay its soldiers deployed in Ukraine and is offering those soldiers weekends off duty instead of money.
Conscripts Sent into Battle Illegally
These conscripts, referred to in Russian as strokiviki, are supposed to go through months of training and are not supposed to be deployed to combat zones. Apparently, because these soldiers, which make up about 25% of Russia’s active army, are a resource that Putin’s generals could not resist tapping to either reinforce their depleted army or to use as cannon fodder for the front lines. Statements from captured Russian soldiers suggest that both possibilities may be true.
Quoting Wikipedia:
As of 2021, all male citizens aged 18–27 are subject to conscription for 1 year of active duty military service in armed forces, but the precise number of conscripts for each of the recruitment campaigns, which are usually held twice annually, is prescribed by particular Presidential Decree. Russian law provides some grounds for temporary postponement of and permanent exemption from military draft.
Over 250,000 Conscripts in Russia’s Army
The most recent draft ordered by Putin was for over 130,000 conscripts, which typically serve for a year and then move into reserve status, which means they are subject to recall into active duty. Assuming that the October 2021 draft was for the same number of conscripts, Putin’s army may include over a quarter of a million conscripts. This is consistent with the estimated size of Russia’s active army consisting of about 850,000 soldiers with about 25% conscripts.
Russia Sending Conscripts to Ukraine – What Does this Mean?
The fact that Russia is breaking its own rules in sending raw draftees into battle in Ukraine is yet another indication that its own regular forces are being depleted as they are wounded, killed, or are rotated out of duty for other reasons. Earlier statements from captured Russian soldiers indicate that many of them were told that they were on a training exercise and did not know that they were being sent into battle.
While the statements of captives are possibly made under duress, these newly-released documents are further evidence that Putin’s army has a significant percentage of poorly-trained soldiers that may not have more skills than the ability to hold a rifle or possibly drive a truck.
How Effective is an Army of Slaves?
If Russia’s army in the Ukraine is dependent on tens of thousands of unwilling, untrained conscripts that know that they were sent into battle against their own country’s regulations, how effective can this slave force be, and how disciplined will their actions be when they are abandoned in Ukraine when supply lines break down and they are left to fend for themselves without food, water, supplies, or tents to sleep in?
Abandoned Soldiers Becoming Bands of Marauding Criminals
This is urban warfare, and abandoned soldiers left without supplies are not going to gather berries and hunt wild pigs, they are going to break into stores and civilian homes to steal food and other supplies, and the worst of them are going to start acting like common criminals who, realizing that there is no effective local government or police force in the area they are occupying and no senior officers to discipline them, will branch out into crime for profit.
These marauding bands of freelance criminals in Russian uniforms are still the responsibility of Russia, which has responsibility for maintaining order and discipline in the ranks of its armed forces. If someone released 100,000 rabid dogs into the Kremlin, they would be responsible for the death and destruction that would result, and so Russia is responsible for both the actions of its soldiers acting under orders and the homeless bands of marauders that it has left behind.
Atrocities Cannot be Solely Blamed on Abandoned Soldiers
This is not to say that the atrocities recently discovered near Kyiv were solely the acts of freelance Russian marauders. The same soldiers that committed these atrocities systematically interrogated and tortured groups of civilians before executing them in groups, and were the same soldiers that the Russian army withdrew to be redeployed in Eastern Ukraine. This suggests that these were not solely the actions of independent bands of renegade soldiers.
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