Now nine months into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are beginning to see a sudden and surprising maneuver from the Kremlin’s forces, and it could help to reshape the global order of things in the coming months.
After repeated failures and a drop in morale that may have never before been seen on a modern battlefield, Russian troops are again looking to mutiny, this time suggesting that their generals are so ill-prepared that they simply cannot and will not fight for them.
Russian marines have said their ‘incompetent’ generals are treating them as ‘cannon fodder’ after their unit suffered devastating losses, with 300 men reportedly killed or wounded in four days of heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Marines from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade wrote a scathing letter to their regional governor, claiming they had lost 300 servicemen in a four-day massacre in Pavlivka thanks to the catastrophic planning of Generals Rustam Muradov and Zurab Akhmedov.
The soldiers claimed Russian commanders were ‘hiding’ the mayhem in the Donetsk region and ‘playing down the number of losses for fear of being held responsible’.
And that’s not all:
Major-General Kirill Kulakov, 53, faced chants of ‘get out of here’, ‘shame on you’, and ‘down with Putin’s regime’ as thousands of mobilised men joined a protest at their training base in the city of Kazan, southwest Russia, on the night before they were due to be sent to the front line.
Soldiers who led the mutiny told superiors they could not fight because they had endured weeks of water shortages and scarce rations – and now they were going to be sent into battle with ‘rusty machine guns from the 1970s’.
This is far from the first time that Russian troops have refused to fight citing military incompetence, but it may very well be one of the most profound examples of such a revolt in recent weeks.
