Why are Russian soldiers refusing to fight in Ukraine?

At the beginning of July, Kaminsky said that he had run out of patience. He refused to fight, becoming one of 78 soldiers in the brigade who refused orders.

“I am morally crushed. There is absolutely no trust in the authorities and the high command,” Kaminsky, 20, told Current Time television in a telephone interview conducted on July 17.

He spoke from an unknown location in the Luhansk region, in eastern Ukraine.

“Because they ignore everything. They ignore every request. They have started to offer alternatives when people have started to bluntly say no”, he said.

“I’m tired. I miss home. My daughter was born three months ago. I still haven’t seen it.”

Nearly four months after the start of Europe’s biggest war since World War II, a number of Russian soldiers, like Kaminsky, are refusing to fight, demanding to return home.

Human rights activists have said that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of troops are reluctant to accept orders to position, fight or stay on the battlefield without rotation.

The troop rejection further complicates the job of Russian commanders as they try to push exhausted units forward along the 480-kilometer front line that runs from Kharkiv in the east to Kherson in southern and central Ukraine.

Western intelligence agencies have said Russia’s losses are substantial.

A senior British commander told the BBC this week that around 50,000 troops have been killed or injured since Russia launched its war in Ukraine on February 24.

The Kremlin has denied announcing a general mobilization to replace troop losses.

However, analysts say that instead of mobilizing, Russian authorities have launched what they describe as a “covert, hybrid” campaign to recruit additional troops.

Some of the methods mentioned are: the use of private military companies, the extension of age restrictions, or lucrative financial incentives.

Paratroopers from the 11th Brigade based in Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Buryatia region in eastern Siberia, arrived in Ukraine’s Kherson region on February 24, shortly after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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After a while, his unit was transferred to Luhansk, in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

In several phone conversations with Current Time, Kaminsky said that troops have not been granted leave for four and a half months, despite the fact that the brigade’s casualties have mounted: About half of the brigade’s personnel – about 1,000 people – have been killed or wounded. in action, he said.

Shortly after the war broke out, Kaminsky said commanders ordered the brigade to defend a 40-mile (64-kilometer) line against Ukrainian forces — about four times the area a brigade can normally defend.

In another case, he told how unit commanders ordered five soldiers to try to take control of an area defended by more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers.

Kaminsky has said that discontent has been growing in the units for weeks, if not months.

Kaminsky himself said that he made about 20 complaints or requests for reassignment of the position, but the requests were rejected.

In total, 78 soldiers, including Kaminsky, have defied orders and asked to be sent home or to other locations, he said.

Meanwhile, the commanders of the units have intervened.

According to an audio recording shared with Current Time, the commanders met with the soldiers on July 17, threatening and begging them to continue serving, or to drop their withdrawal demands.

“Command post guard duty? Artillery guard duty? Does anyone want it?”, a colonel, identified only by the surname Agafonov, can be heard saying as he talks to the soldiers.

“Brigade commanders ask who wants to guard the second sniper unit. Anyone? Three days of duty?

“They’re making everything easy for you guys. I’m warning you, this is the final offer,” he is heard telling the soldiers.

“If no one is willing to accept the offers from the brigade commanders, I will not arrest you. However, you have until 18:00. After that time, I don’t consider other offers”.

According to Kaminsky, the pressure has partially worked. As of July 16, 50 of the 78 soldiers who have requested to return home have given up such a request.

The rest were arrested and the soldiers were held in makeshift brigades in the Luhansk region, according to Kaminsky, where they were given bread only once a day.

As of July 20, the fate of the arrested soldiers is unknown.

Russian military regulations provide several legal justifications and procedures for soldiers who disobey orders, according to Sergei Krivenko, a human rights activist – especially for those who consider themselves anti-war, or pacifist.

“If a soldier acts according to such procedures, he cannot be prosecuted for this, because there are no criminal articles that foresee termination of the contract on the basis of anti-war beliefs,” Krivenko told Current Time.

“The soldier is part of the unit, he is not running away anywhere. Therefore, this means that he cannot be judged for leaving.”

“He is not refusing to follow the orders, because nothing like that is happening. He simply declares himself with anti-war beliefs,” said Krivenko.

‘I had to refuse just to stay alive’

A good part of Russia’s troops in Ukraine are contract soldiers: volunteer personnel with fixed service contracts.

Their experiences differ.

Ukraine: $100 offered in exchange for information on Russian associates

Other units include private companies that provide military services such as Vagner or units overseen by the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The discontent in Kaminsky’s 11th Brigade is not an isolated case, and there are signs that Russian commanders are implementing various tactics to keep the problem under control, publicly shaming soldiers who refuse to fight.

In the southern Russian town of Budjonovsk, base of the 205th Brigade, commanders have created a “wall of shame” with the names and photographs of about 300 soldiers who disobeyed orders throughout the war in Ukraine.

“They have forgotten the military oaths, the ceremonial promises, the vows to the motherland,” says the writing on the wall.

In several conversations with Current Time television, through the Russian social network, VK, some soldiers of the brigade have disputed the circumstances of being included in that wall.

They have requested that their names not be public, for fear of other punishments.

“I understand everything, of course. I have signed the contract. I am supposed to be ready for any situation; for this war, special operation”, wrote a soldier.

“Well, I thought, I’m still young, at any moment a bullet can pass over my head.”

The soldier said that he broke the contract and left the brigade before the February 24 invasion.

“I thought about it for a long time and made the decision. I understand that I refused something to stay alive”, he said.

“I don’t regret it at all.”

‘You are nobody’

Another soldier of the 205th Brigade said that the commanders did not give him time to prepare before the war and when the units left, they were told that they were on their way to training.

“We didn’t have normal ammunition or helmets. We didn’t have food or water,” he said.

“Honestly, we have supplied ourselves” with food.

“I didn’t think about withdrawing, but it happened because of my wife’s difficult pregnancy, so I asked to leave until she gives birth,” the third soldier told Current Time in a conversation through the VK platform.

The answer of the “bosses” has been: We don’t care about your problems, go on, give up”.

In the conversation with Current Time, Kaminsky also spoke about the approach of the commanders to their soldiers, saying that they do not consider the well-being.

“Those people are ready for anything. They don’t care about the life of a soldier,” said Kaminsky.

“They would rather bury themselves on the war front than leave their positions”, he said, describing the attitude of the commanders.

“It is not too late for them. For them you are just a soldier, you are nobody”./REL

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