Russia: Putin might be losing support as conscript morale drops
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Vladimir Putin was dealt yet another blow in his war effort, as hundreds of Russian soldiers have reportedly been detained for rebelling against orders from their military commanders. Quoting local independent media outlets, The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) found Russian drafted soldiers are refusing to take up arms in Ukraine in growing acts of defiance of Putin’s military authority. In total, hundreds of troops are reported to be locked up in information detention centres.
According to the independent Russia news outlet ASTRA, at least 12 Russian soldiers are being confined in a basement for refusing to fight in Zavtine Bazhannia, in the Donetsk Oblast.
In an interview, one Russian soldier named Mikhail Nosov demanded his fellow comrades be released. He also requested his commanders were prosecuted for holding them against their will.
Mikhail Nosov was sent to the battle front in early September, as Putin ordered a partial mobilisation to beef up his troops on the battlegrond. He said he did not receive any medical examination or adequate combat training, revealing Vladimir Putin’s strategy of sending Russian troops as cannon fodder.
In a statement to Russia’s Investigative Committee, he said: “As a result of tactical and strategic miscalculations by the higher command, constant lies to my own subordinates, insufficient medical and material support, my confidence in the commanders was shaken.”
After a month on the battleground, Mr Nosov alongside other Russian men were detained in a basement on October 16 for refusing to fight. They only stayed there for two days before being forced to dig trenches.
Two weeks of forced digging work later, the Russian conscripts were asked if they had changed their minds about participating in the war. They said they had not, prompting commanders to take them to another undisclosed basement in the Donbas region, where they were detained for another two weeks.
They lived in poor conditions, being allowed only one meal per day and no shower, ASTRA reported.
Other outbreaks of mutiny sparked across the battlefield, with Russian Telegram channel CTD posting a video purportedly showing “a rebellion of the mobilized” in Kazan, in the Republic of Tatarstan. A group of soldiers can be seen pushing through a gate and leaving in droves because “they are not allowed to go to their relatives and are not given leave.”
The ISW found three other cases of mobilised soldiers rioting, disobeying orders and demonstrating disruptive behaviour in November alone.
Sir Jeremy Fleming, the head of GCHQ, said instances of munity could proliferate as the Russian army suffered from a string of “dreadful” failures and chronic weapon supply issues.
The director of Britain’s cyber security agency added Putin now finds himself in a “desperate” situation as his population “flees the draft, realising they can no longer travel” and his recruits are forced onto the battlefield without adequate supplies.
Professor Peter Duncan at UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies said sending Russian conscripts without proper military training was “really just a recipe foe more desertions, more deaths – more people possibily being mutinous.”
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The growing rebellion against Vladimir Putin comes as Russia’s Defence Ministry reported Ukrainian drones attacked two airbases at Ryazan and Saratov in south-central Russia, killing three servicemen and wounding four, with two aircraft damaged.
Ten months into the war, the epicentre of the conflict now is in Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk province, one of the four provinces Putin annexed to Russia. Despite the recent mobilisation, Russian soldiers have made only slow progress around the city due to faulty equipment.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has the front-line city of Sloviansk in the region of Donetsk, where Russian forces have been pressing an offensive for months, the presidency said.
After a moment of silence to commemorate fallen Ukrainian soldiers, the Ukrainian President called the soldiers the “outpost of our independence”.
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