Vladimir Putin admits to 360,000 “irretrievable” losses in Ukraine. Trumps special envoy to Ukraine confirms Russians losing 5 times more troops.
- Thread starter Mister Terrific
- Start date
east
Screwed up... till tha casket drops!!
also, timestamped - "we've assessed over the course of the last couple of months that russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily, and after the initial setbacks on the battlefield have [...with] dual use capabilities and a variety of other efforts, indistrial and commercial, russia has retooled" - more blood for the blood god
Pardoned for Serving in Ukraine, They Return to Russia to Kill Again
Recruiting convicts for its army has given Russia a manpower advantage. But it is backfiring in tragic ways when former inmates are pardoned and return home to commit new crimes.
Pardoned for Serving in Ukraine, They Return to Russia to Kill Again
Recruiting convicts for its army has given Russia a manpower advantage. But it is backfiring in tragic ways when former inmates are pardoned and return home to commit new crimes.
A Russian military recruitment billboard saying, “Heroes are not born, they are made,” last year in Ulan-Ude, Russia. Veterans who survive the front line return to Russia as heroes with an elevated status in society.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
By Neil MacFarquhar and Milana Mazaeva
April 6, 2024
Viktor Savvinov had already been imprisoned several times for various crimes — including robbery, auto theft and assault — when he murdered a female drinking companion during a quarrel in 2020, stabbing her in the chest with four knives.
A court in Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia sentenced him to 11 years in a maximum-security prison. So when recruiters from the private Wagner mercenary group offered him freedom and a clean slate if he deployed to fight in Ukraine, Mr. Savvinov, a morgue orderly, seized the opportunity.
By February, Mr. Savvinov had completed his service and was back in his native village of Kutana. That month, on Defenders of the Fatherland Day, he was staggering drunk around the snowy streets, residents said, complaining loudly that villagers showed him insufficient respect as a veteran. The next night, he murdered two of them, according to a law enforcement report, striking a male drinking buddy dead with a metal crowbar before killing his own estranged aunt, who lived next door, by axing her in the head, and then torching her wooden house.
Russia’s practice of recruiting convicts has been the backbone of its success in Ukraine, providing an overwhelming manpower advantage in the war. But it is backfiring in tragic ways as inmates pardoned for serving in Ukraine return to Russia and commit new crimes.
Overall numbers on recidivist crimes are hard to establish because the Russian government restricts the release of any public information that puts the war in a bad light. A survey of Russian court records by the independent media outlet Verstka found that at least 190 criminal cases were initiated against pardoned Wagner recruits in 2023. That included 20 cases of murder or attempted murder as well as rape, robbery and drug-related crimes, among others.
Still, the Kremlin appears to be doubling down on the policy of recruiting inmates. On March 23, President Vladimir V. Putin signed a new law meant to formalize the process.
Before, the criteria for pardons was opaque, and Mr. Putin pardoned convicts who had fought in Ukraine by signing decrees that were never made public. The new law established a long list of eligible crimes that were explicitly added into Russia’s criminal code, including murder, robbery and some rapes. Earning pardons is now a matter of law, not presidential decree, but convicts let out of prison to fight can get one only after their military commanders approve.
Crimes not eligible include terrorism, espionage or treason, and some sex crimes involving minors, among others.
“Nobody used to lock their doors in the village at night, but now they lock them with a key, even during the day,” said a resident of Kutana, a Siberian village of 1,000 people, declining in an interview to use her name out of fear that Mr. Savvinov might win another pardon if he was convicted and volunteered again to fight in Ukraine.
“Normal life” was gone, she added, noting that the aunt whom he killed had once been named a “teacher of the year” and awarded a prize from the Kremlin.
Similar experiences have scarred other cities and towns.
In Chita, near the border with Mongolia, a Ukraine veteran was sentenced last month to 14 years in prison for strangling a 22-year-old prostitute to death with his bare hands. In 2020, he was sentenced to 14 years for strangling and dismembering an 18-year-old girl.
In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a former Wagner mercenary who had served 15 years on theft and fraud charges was sentenced in February to 17 years for raping two schoolgirls, aged 10 and 12.
Near the southwestern city of Krasnodar last spring, a young father, Kirill Chubko, the owner of a party business, and one of his employees stopped to fix a burst tire on a darkened road one night. They encountered three highway robbers who forced them to withdraw around $2,000 from their banks before fatally stabbing them, according to a law enforcement report. The head of the gang had been sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2016 for preying on motorists but was released to serve in Ukraine.
Image
Kirill Chubko, in an undated photograph with his wife and son. Mr. Chubko was killed along with a co-worker by highway robbers last year.
In 2017, Sergey Rudenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison for strangling his girlfriend to death with a belt. He earned his release when he signed on with Wagner to fight in Ukraine.
In April 2023, in Rostov-on-Don, in southwestern Russia, Mr. Rudenko, 34, went looking for an apartment. After arguing with the real estate agent over the proposed rent, he strangled her with a cloth cord, then stabbed her in the neck, a law enforcement report said. A district court sentenced Mr. Rudenko to more than 11 years in prison.
Local news reports did not name the victim, and several local residents, reached by telephone, said they knew nothing about it.
The details of these crimes were drawn from numerous interviews, local investigation reports, local news articles and court records. Most relatives and friends of the murder victims spoke on the condition of anonymity, concerned that the killers might win new pardons and come after them. Those interviewed were also worried that the authorities might charge them under wartime laws against denigrating the military, which includes publicizing soldiers’ previous crimes.
The Wagner group began recruiting convicts in August 2022, with a promise of presidential pardons in exchange for signing a six-month contract. Before being disbanded last year in the wake of a failed mutiny against the Kremlin, the group said it had recruited more than 50,000 prisoners.
Many of those men died, some are still fighting and an estimated 15,000 ex-convicts have returned home, according to Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, an NGO dealing with prisoner issues.
“A great many prisoners were back on the loose, and it became a big problem,” she said. The crimes seemed to belie the official narrative that the war is being fought to make Russia safer and that veterans will constitute a new elite, she added.
Crimes committed by veterans, whether from the Wagner group or otherwise, often go unreported. National media outlets have mentioned only a few sensational cases. “It is a story about invisible violence,” said Kirill Titaev, a Russian sociologist working at Yale University who specializes in criminology. “It is a big problem for the society, but one they do not recognize.”
Image
A classroom in Velyka Oleksandrivka, Ukraine, in 2022. Before being disbanded last year, the Wagner group said it had recruited more than 50,000 prisoners.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
Russian commanders frequently deploy untrained convicts who join the Russian army as cannon fodder. Having survived harsh conditions in penal colonies and then a bloody war, they emerge back on the streets with zero rehabilitation.
Many of them return to their communities exuding a certain swagger, experts said. They view their service as having rehabilitated them, and usually have money to burn. Their base monthly pay from Wagner of around $2,000 constituted a small fortune in much of Russia.
In addition, law enforcement officers are often intimidated by the former inmates’ new status, Ms. Romanova said.
Those pardoned after committing particularly shocking crimes and then serving in Ukraine include a serial killer from Sakhalin known for cannibalism; a member of a Satanist sect convicted of ritualistic slayings; and a man who killed his former girlfriend by brutally torturing her for hours.
Last year, Mr. Putin played down the issue of pardoned convicts committing new crimes. “This is inevitable,” the president said. “But the negative consequences are minimal.” Although he confirmed issuing presidential pardons, the Kremlin has refused to name the recipients.
Relatives of previous victims and other locals are often vocal critics of releasing criminals. In Novosibirsk, the pardoned murderer of a used-car saleswoman is now driving a taxi, despite efforts to get him dismissed.
Image
For convicts serving long sentences in some of Russia’s most notorious penal colonies, the trade-off of volunteering to go to war in exchange for their eventual freedom was appealing.Credit...Anatoly Maltsev/EPA, via Shutterstock
Some lawyers accuse prosecutors of slow-walking cases against veterans in hopes that the local outcry will quiet.
“This is a new level of lawlessness,” said the lawyer for the widow of Mr. Chubko, who along with his employee was murdered by a highway gang. The lawyer’s repeated requests to prosecutors for a copy of the pardon have been denied. “They keep telling us that it is a state secret,” he said. “We are fighting the investigation more than the accused.”
Mr. Chubko called his wife late on the night he was killed, telling her not to stay up, that some men he encountered on the road would help change his flat tire. The next morning, her husband, still not home, did not answer his cellphone.
However, his wife reached Tatyana Mostyko, 19, who worked for her husband. Ms. Mostyko told her in a strange voice that Mr. Chubko was not available, and the wife said that she figured out later that he had already been killed. Ms. Mostyko was being driven around to various A.T.M.s and was soon murdered, according to an investigation report.
The widow said attending the arraignment of the three suspects made her sick to her stomach. (The other two had petty criminal records, and there was no indication that either had served in Ukraine, according to local press reports.)
“It was obvious that they had no regrets,” she said. Her husband had once remarked that recruiting soldiers from prisons was not normal, she added.
“These people belong in prison,” she said. “I’m scared that they are among us. My kid and I walk in the park, and they might be walking there. It’s not like it’s written on their foreheads that they are criminals.”
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
More than 50,000 Russians killed in Ukrainian ‘meat grinder’: Report
The rate of casualties accelerated last year as inexperienced troops arrived on the front lines.Russian military casualties in the war with Ukraine have topped 50,000, according to research.
The BBC, whose Russian unit has been counting deaths since Moscow’s forces invaded the neighbouring state in February 2022, revealed the number on Wednesday, noting that the rate of casualties accelerated in the second year of the conflict.
The tally, compiled by BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers saw the death toll rise to 27,300 Russian soldiers during the second year of the war, a 25 percent increase on the first year.
The only official death toll released by Russia said in September 2022 that just under 6,000 of its soldiers had been killed.
‘Meat grinder’
The research notes that Moscow’s use of “meat grinder” tactics is likely to have accelerated the loss rate of troops last year.The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) points out that as the front line in eastern Ukraine became bogged down in 2023, battleground tactics deteriorated into sending waves of troops in frontal assaults.
That saw Russian losses spike during large-scale offensives in Donetsk, the BBC investigation says, and again months later during the battle to take the city of Bakhmut.
The BBC estimates at least two in five of Russia’s dead fighters had nothing to do with the military before the invasion, being drawn from the ranks of volunteers, civilians and prisoners, and therefore struggled for technical and tactical expertise.
The analysis notes about 9,000 prisoners, recruited either through the Wagner mercenary outfit or directly by the Ministry of Defence, were killed in the invasion. These recruits survived an average of two to three months.
The BBC acknowledges that its data does not cover casualties among militia forces in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, while adding that the actual overall death toll is probably significantly higher than 50,000.
Ukraine said in February that it had lost 31,000 soldiers. That figure is also widely thought likely to be lower than the true toll.
Responding to the report, the Kremlin said it did not disclose information on military deaths and casualties, which falls under the remit of the defence ministry.
According to AFP, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that due to laws covering official secrets of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine it is “absolutely understandable” that the ministry did not release the figures.
More than 50,000 Russians killed in Ukrainian ‘meat grinder’: Report
The rate of casualties accelerated last year as inexperienced troops arrived on the front lines.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Piff Perkins
Veteran
He was certainly terrified of something because just a week ago he straight up said he didn't care what happens in Ukraine. I think US intelligence/military/etc has determined this thing is still salvageable, at least to ward off the worst case scenario of a Russian victory. I'd imagine there's also unease because of the potential that Trump could be in charge 9 months from now. I doubt that happens but nonetheless it's a possibility. I think that's a doomsday scenario for Europe.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Yep. I also wonder if he underestimated how much Americans care about Russia winning. This was politically disastrous for republicans. To look this unpatriotic and seemingly under Russian sway.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Historian slaps down Coli Arab and Marjorie Taylor Green narrative that Ukraine is a Nazi state.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
They knew it? In the trench warfare situation that's happening now Information Operations Trolling is probably extremely important now.
Mister Terrific
It’s in the name
This congresswoman was born and raised in Ukraine. She just voted against aid for her homeland
Instead she has called for better oversight of U.S. funds and opposed giving “blank checks” to the Ukrainian cause.
apnews.com
Cacs are dangerous and wild..willing to sacrifice their own to maintain racial supremacy or whatever in the us
