Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on the evening of Monday April 18 that “Russian troops have started the battle for Donbass”. After having failed to take kyiv, the Russian army is therefore concentrating on the east of the country while the morale of the Russian troops would be at its lowest. To prove it, a recording was posted online a few days ago by the Ukrainian security services.
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This document is presented as coming from a young wounded Russian soldier, who just before dying, sends this message to his little brother: “Do not go there. Here, no one is considered a full person. There are people who simply die and we don’t even pick up their bodies. Don’t go, even if we threaten to fire you, because we only have one life. And if they threaten you with prosecution for desertion or whatever… Send them to hell”can we hear.
A message of unverifiable authenticity which is to be included in the long list of elements of the information war that the Russians and Ukrainians are waging, such as the accusations of “fake news” put forward by the Kremlin on the Boutcha massacre, or more recently on the sinking of the Russian ship Moskva in the Black Sea, the fate of the sailors of which remain unknown. But which could however reveal a malaise, much more concrete: the Russian conscripts, in their vast majority aged 18 to 20, would feel duped, deceived. And they no longer hesitate to disobey and tell young people their age. “First, they tell them that they haven’t seen a single fascistexplains Ukrainian journalist and politician Dmytri Gordon. Second, they tell them that the Ukrainian army is much more motivated than them, and much better supplied. Third, they say Ukrainians are not afraid to kill them.”
This message from the young soldier is reminiscent of another: the one read by Permanent Ambassador of Ukraine to the UN, on February 28, at the United Nations platform. “Mom, I’m in Ukraine. There is a real war here. I’m afraid. We bomb all the cities at the same time. Even civilians are targeted. We had been told that they would welcome us and they threw themselves under the wheels of our vehicles to prevent us from passing. They call us fascists. Mama, it’s so hard“, would have thus written the fighter in a series of messages addressed to his mother, who, according to the ambassador, has “been killed“.
Here’s a transcript of a Russian soldier’s last text messages to his mother that Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UN just read out from screenshots at the emergency session of the UN General Assembly pic.twitter.com/j8fTAz3xwr
— Vera Bergengruen (@VeraMBergen) February 28, 2022
Result: some would no longer obey and if Stalin’s order in 1942, “not a step back” with shot deserters, is no longer valid, the Russian army now has other means of pressure. “Commanders of regiments, brigades and the entire Ministry of Defense have ordered the banks to draw up lists of those who are in debt, those who have loans or those who simply have financial problemssays Dmytri Gordon. The Ministry of Defense understands that there is a big problem, that soldiers can refuse to fight.”
Refuse to fight, but also refuse to enlist: according to a specialist in the Russian army, conscripts are currently coming to the end of their military service, which lasts one year. The succession is planned for the months of May and June. And it is by no means certain that the Russian army will be able to find the same numbers, that is to say 150,000 men, that it had committed at the start of the war.