It is an armored vehicle that runs at full speed in the open field to flee from the Ukrainian advance, it is a makeshift bivouac where soldiers languish without shelter or comfort. The independent investigation team Conflict Intelligence Team released two videos through which the Russian soldiers themselves denounce their living conditions but also the precariousness of their situation at the front. Their discouragement is all the more profound given that Ukraine is unleashing a new counter-offensive in the east, and in the south the authorities have already had to resign themselves to evacuating 140,000 people from the city of Kherson.
General Jérôme Pellistrandi, a BFMTV consultant for defense issues, analyzed these images. If the expert considers them revealing of the dilapidated state of the Russian army, he reminds that he still has some resources.
“We have to go, hurry up!”
The first video first shows a crossroads, on a Ukrainian national highway. We hear the angry Russian soldiers near their tank.
“Stop the vehicle, stop it!” one of them launches. “Down, fuck, faster. We have to go, hurry up! Faster!”, we can still hear.
The following sequence shows the vehicle traveling at high speed on a dirt road, probably to escape its pursuers. The sign of Russian fever before the Ukrainian push. And again, this tank is lucky to get away with it.
“Walking Coffins”
“We know that today, the main supplier of armored equipment for Ukraine is Russia. Why? Because the Russians are abandoning the equipment”, highlights Jérôme Pellistrandi.
An abandonment of equipment that necessarily implies human deliveries, our consultant also underlines: “It means that the soldiers have surrendered, because they are in cans that are walking coffins.”
In concrete terms, to make up for the losses, the Russians had to rely on Soviet vehicles…directly from Nikita Khrushchev’s factories.
“The Russians have put T62-type tanks back into service. ’62’, like 1962, completely obsolete tanks,” notes Jérôme Pellistrandi.
“Nowhere to dry off”
Suffice it to say that the upcoming operations look bleak for the Russians. And the situation naturally weighs on the morale of the troops. This is what the second video broadcast by the Conflict Intelligence Team illustrates. We first see a destroyed tent, as a soldier explains:
“The 3rd Battalion from Penza came here. We originally lived in these handmade tents. It started raining, we had to move. Everybody’s got a cold already. Everything’s fucking wet now. The guys are outside and we’re walking shit.”
The same man continues, filming what does look like a barn or pigsty: “There, it’s a cattle pen, or something like that.”
Over very thin quilts, thrown on the floor, he exclaims: “Here the boys have built something, everything is fucking open. This is where we sleep, damn it! We threw straw on the cement.”
“Here is our fucking army. We have nowhere to dry,” he concludes.
poorly equipped
This last detail may seem trivial, but it is of crucial psychological importance. “We are heading towards the winter season, then we have the autumn rains, and when you have a soaked uniform, drying it is the minimum. They are, therefore, almost inhumane living conditions”, emphasizes Jérôme Pellistrandi.
The ordeal is made all the more painful by the contrasting effect produced on Russian minds by enemy soldiers housed in much better circumstances. The general thus recalls that “the first Western deliveries to Ukraine, since the end of February, were individual equipment: uniforms, helmets.”
“The Ukrainian command asked us to provide them with winter gear, extreme cold jackets, Rangers. Whereas from the Russian side, we know that for the newly mobilized soldiers, their families had to buy first aid kits to equip them. On the one hand, we have a well-equipped and well-fed army, on the other hand, the Russian soldiers must fend for themselves”, develops Jérôme Pellistrandi.
Caution is still in order
“There is a dynamic on the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainian command is extremely efficient, the soldier too, and on the Russian side, they slip in all directions, the logistics are deplorable”, summarizes our consultant, who however calls for “prudence”. ., despite “the anguish of the Russian soldier”.
And this is due to several factors. First of all, the Russian army is used to difficult seasons. And then the front is relatively stable, despite the Ukraine thrashing. Status quo that the arrival of winter could freeze.
“At the moment, the advantage is rather with the Ukrainians, but we will see how the positions will freeze with the winter. Especially since during this time, the Russians continue to bombard the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure”, Jérôme Pellistrandi states.
Finally, it is not excluded that the famous “partial mobilization” decreed by Vladimir Putin will finally bear fruit, although it has often failed so far. “The Russian command still has new soldiers. And so you may have the best equipped soldier in the world, if he is in a ratio of one to ten, he could be overwhelmed, ”completes the BFMTV Defense consultant.
Source: BFM TV
