I'm reminded watching these videos how much I miss Yevgeny Prigozhin's videos when he would scream Shoigu!!, blaming Russia's Minister of Defense for all the ills of their war in Ukraine. But even Prigozhin was careful not to criticize President Putin. Not so here, and perhaps tellingly in one video, the soldier makes no effort to conceal his identity.
And it's no wonder they're so angry. Russia has been recruiting about 120,000 soldiers every six months, but attriting at a fantastic rate, pushing too many untrained recruits to the front lines who, as the Ukrainians put it, become almost instant "biomass", leaving just 40,000 of those men still alive in time for the next wave. And unlike in the Ukrainian military, if you're Russian you aren't rotated out. That's led many to speculate that Russia will have to go to forced conscription after the next presidential election in March, a move that will be wildly unpopular but necessary to continue their war effort.
Source: Newsweek
A man believed to be a Russian soldier has ripped into President Vladimir Putin and other officials in an expletive-ridden video shared on social media.
The clip of the supposed soldier was uploaded to X, formerly Twitter, by Ukraine's former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Herashchenko on December 23.
Ukrainian officials have claimed Russia has suffered more than 350,000 casualties since the war began. Moscow and international commentators have previously disputed Kyiv's figures.
In the video, the soldier claimed to be close to Mar'inka—just southwest of the eastern city of Donetsk—and hit out at Putin, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and questioned where the rest of the country's army was.
Anton Gerashchenko with the helpful translations.
