A new mutiny by Vladimir Putin’s ‘cannon fodder’ forces has led mobilized men to claim they are being ‘sent to the slaughter’ and their comrades to commit suicide rather than fight.
The reservists claim their officers openly call them “meat,” and say large numbers of their compatriots have been wiped out in pointless, unsupported attacks.
In one clip, a group of troops from Kaliningrad speak to their commander and question the whole point of Putin’s war during a showdown.
“We are being sent to certain death,” they say. “For whom, for what?”
It is just the latest in a long line of Russian troops refusing to obey orders and fighting on the front lines as stormtroopers for the pro-Kremlin forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Another mutiny by Vladimir Putin’s ‘cannon fodder’ troops has led to mobilized men refusing to go to the front lines, claiming they were being ‘sent to the slaughter’
In one clip, a group of mobilized troops from Kaliningrad speak to their commander and question the whole point of Putin’s war during a showdown
Mobilized troops from the Siberian city of Irkutsk said that, despite being called up as defensive soldiers, they were sent without support to attack Ukrainian positions on the frontline.
Ukrainian soldiers fire a 105mm howitzer at Russian positions near the city of Bakhmut, on March 8, 2023, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The Kaliningrad reservists, who were recruited from a Russian exclave bordering Poland and further west than Ukraine, taunted their commander in a dark, stuffy room.
‘You don’t want us to refuse [to fight]…? We’d better go to jail. Put everyone in jail, we stay there.
‘No one will go there [to the frontline]. How long is it [in jail]? 5, 7 years? 10?
‘We don’t give a damn. At least then we’ll live and not throw the rest of our lives away.’
They made it clear that they would not refuse to fight to defend Russian territory as they had been drafted to be territorial defense forces. But they stated that they would refuse to attack Ukrainian villages.
A “whole company” of their comrades had died within a week, they said, recounting how men kill themselves instead of going to the front.
“A man went out, sat on a bench, pointed the gun and blew his brains out,” the commander was told.
“He walked and said, ‘I’m sick to death of it, sick to death of it. Did you see that pool of blood?
He wouldn’t attack [on the frontline]…and pulled the trigger instead. Is that normal?’
They revealed that some of the Refusal’s comrades had been thrown into makeshift prisons—pits dug into the ground—because they refused to fight.
The commander was heard to say that they were under the command of the Ministry of Defense and their complaints were like a ‘bone in the throat’ of the Russian war effort.
Multiple video calls to Putin – including from wives and mothers in Kaliningrad – to safely return their husbands have all been ignored.
Mothers and wives of mobilized DPR ask Putin to restore order and not send their relatives to the frontline
Another group of fighters made a video call to Putin and said: ‘People are dying, this is all that is left of my platoon of the whole company’
Ukrainian combat medics evacuate injured Ukrainian servicemen from the frontline near Bakhmut, on March 8, 2023, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukrainian soldiers in a trench under Russian shelling on the frontline close to the besieged city
Pictured: A map showing the rough position of troops around the besieged city of Bakhmut. Russian troops are approaching from the north, east and south, leaving Ukraine’s defenders with only one route (west) to escape. But Russia is suffering terrible losses as a result of its “human wave” tactics
In a separate video, troops from Irkutsk say on video: “We are sent to attack fortified districts without any support from the artillery and heavy guns…
“In a word, we are being sent to the slaughter, under mortar fire and artillery…”
Others from Siberia also threaten mutiny, saying: ‘We were forced to attack villages, untrained, and with an average age of 40….
“Without reconnaissance, without communication, without anything…
“We don’t know the cards, this is complete bull****.”
Another group of fighters made a video call to Putin saying, “People are dying, this is all that’s left of my platoon of the whole company.”
A Russian source said: ‘The exact size of mobilized men refusing to fight is difficult to quantify, but anecdotal evidence indicates that the number of refusers is growing rapidly.
“Seeing mass deaths from reservist troops being used as cannon fodder, they realize their chances of survival are close to nil.”
Such men are often left without proper food to rot in squalid, overcrowded makeshift prisons.
The Russian tactic of sending wave after wave of under-equipped and under-trained men to the front lines has proven somewhat successful in the battle for the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut in Donetsk, which NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg warned on Wednesday could fall within days.
But the attrition in the Bakhmut meat grinder is harrowing – multiple reports suggest that hundreds of soldiers on both sides are dying every day, with Moscow suffering horrendous casualties as their cannon fodder troops are deployed to absorb Ukrainian bullets.