Russian soldier breaks down crying: ‘We’re just meat here’

Almost five months after Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” and following countless reports of troops resorting to desperate measures to end the war, Russia’s Defense Ministry suddenly announced on Thursday that there was a “chance” for some soldiers in Ukraine’s Donbass to rest”.

According to the TASS news agency, the alleged interruption was announced to Russian journalists by a ministry spokesman early on Thursday. It was designed as a compassionate gesture to ensure the well-being of the troops, with a spokesman quoted as saying the time would be used to “replenish combat capabilities” and allow troops to “deliver letters and packages from home.” receive”.

The announcement came after the Institute for the Study of War noted that for the first time in the all-out invasion, Russia could not boast of new territorial gains, a fact which experts said seemed to indicate that they “had broadly launched an operation.” Break.”

But a separate briefing by Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov on Thursday made no mention of such a break, and it wasn’t clear how many soldiers were reportedly allowed to take time off. Nor was it clear what exactly a “chance to rest” would entail.

Instead, the remarks appeared more consistent with the Kremlin’s recent PR efforts to boost morale, amid reports of dead troops being literally cremated to hide casualties and soldiers being sent to the front lines without equipment. The pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda did its best to frame the announcement as cause for celebration among the troops, and reported that concerts were even arranged for them.

The reality was far different on the ground in Ukraine, where local authorities in Kramatorsk said Russian forces carried out a rocket attack in the center of the city early Thursday that claimed casualties. It was not immediately clear how many people were injured or killed.

The alleged “pause in operations” touted by Russian military officials also comes amid reports of Putin’s troops taking increasingly drastic measures to hide casualties and shore up depleted resources.

In Kherson, where an official from Russia’s Federal Security Service recently took charge of the “new” Kremlin administration, authorities have started burning the bodies of dead soldiers “to hide the actual number of casualties,” according to Ukrainian intelligence.

“On the outskirts of the city, sites with large numbers of burned human remains have been repeatedly seen,” the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, noting that local authorities are trying to pass on the fires as if they were caused by artillery attacks.

Russia, too, appears to be growing more desperate in its attempts to find fresh cannon fodder for the war — so much so that the military has begun raiding public employment agencies designed to help the unemployed, according to a new report.

Independent investigative agency IStories reported Thursday that several Russian brigades that have suffered the heaviest casualties in Ukraine – including one accused of committing genocide in Bucha – have used job posting portals to hunt down desperate people, who were not lucky for the job, and in some cases they are sent directly to the front without any training.

Russian troops caught in intercepted phone conversations with relatives back home have also routinely spoken out about the military hanging them out to dry, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

In a particularly disturbing call shared by Ukraine’s security service this week, a man identified as a Russian soldier can be heard collapsing as he tells a family member: “You know how many bodies I’ve seen, the kind , which you have never seen in your life: without heads, without legs, without torsos…”

“I’ll never recover from this… There’s only meat here… You can’t imagine what’s going on here. I don’t see how to go back to normal life.”