Russian army
The soldier as cannon fodder
By Thomas Dudek
04/06/2022 11:57 am
The Russian army is waging a brutal war in Ukraine. However, many reports and figures also reveal the ruthless structures within the Russian army, in which the individual person does not count for much.
It is depressing eyewitness accounts and videos that one reads and sees from the embattled city of Mariupol or the Kiev suburbs like Irpin and Bucha, where the Russian army murdered Ukrainian men, all civilians, between the ages of 16 and 60 as they pulled out. There is also reports of rape, harassment and looting that give an idea of the horror people have experienced under Russian occupation in recent weeks. One should also not forget the use of internationally banned bombs by Russian armed forces. It is evidence of the unbelievable brutality of a senseless war, which, despite all the assurances from Moscow, is also aimed at civilians.
But as strange as that may sound after the recent horrific images of executed civilians in Bucha, it must be said that brutality and brutality are also to be found within the structure of the Russian armed forces, and are even an integral part of it. Because there are always reports that give the impression that the individual person counts for nothing in the Russian army and only serves as cannon fodder. Which, it must be stressed, is no excuse for the war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The best example are the latest reports about Russian soldiers in the “Red Forest” of Chernobyl, a radioactively highly contaminated zone near the accident power plant. They are said not only to have been there with tanks, but also allegedly to have dug trenches. All without protective equipment, without prior knowledge of Chernobyl. “When they were asked if they knew about the 1986 disaster, the fourth reactor explosion, they had no idea,” said one of the plant’s employees. Apparently, the soldiers were not informed about the location by their superiors either. “They had no idea what type of facility they were in. The soldiers would only have explained that it was critical infrastructure,” said the aforementioned facility employee.
Russia apparently does not want the fallen back
An army that treats its living soldiers in this way apparently doesn’t care much about the fallen military personnel. In any case, the Ukrainian side has been complaining for weeks that not only are they being left behind, but that the Russian army doesn’t even want their own dead soldiers back. Which forces Ukrainians to bury Russian soldiers in mass graves to prevent inhuman images and epidemics. Videos of stray dogs and other animals chewing on the corpses of dead Russian soldiers can be found on social media.
Military expert Gustav C. Gressel is familiar with these images. “The withdrawal of the Russian army from the region around Kyiv seems to have been chaotic if they leave their fallen soldiers behind like this,” says the political scientist at the European Council on Foreign Relations ntv.de. Gressel also finds this surprising. “During the war in the Donbass, the Russian army had its dead soldiers burned in order to cover up their deployment. However, the Russian army has been officially deployed since February 24. Actually, they have no reason for the questionable treatment of their dead soldiers,” he says.
This way of treating their own soldiers is apparently a legacy of the former Soviet Union. 6.2 million Soviet soldiers died during the Second World War, and no other Allied power had to mourn more deaths. Of course, the responsibility for this lies with the German war leadership, which acted with all brutality against the soldiers, who were regarded as “subhuman”. But Stalin’s regime also played a role. His stop orders, which equated soldiers who had been taken prisoner of war with deserters and even had consequences for their families, revealed his indifference towards individuals. For most Red Army soldiers, being a German prisoner of war meant death.
The “Reign of the Grandfathers”
The indifference towards the individual soldier is also reflected in the memorials for the fallen of the Red Army, which can be found in Berlin, among other places. “The main purpose of the memorials is not to commemorate the fallen soldiers, but to symbolize the glory and greatness of the Soviet army,” says Gressel, who specializes in the Russian army.
It was already evident in August 2001 that reputation and fame are more important to today’s Russian army and the Kremlin than the lives of individual soldiers. Back then, a year after Putin was first elected President of Russia, the Nuclear submarine Kursk. As it later turned out, 23 of the crew of more than 100 could have been rescued if the Russian Navy had not only kept quiet about the accident at first, but had also not rejected the rescue attempts offered by the West.
Another oppressive legacy of the Soviet Army is also the practice of “Dedovchina”, the “rule of the grandfathers”. A system of harassment within the army, in which younger soldiers are sometimes tortured to the death by their older comrades. In 2010 alone, the Ministry of Defense spoke of more than 1,700 Dedovchina victims. “They wanted to put an end to this practice with a reform that also included the introduction of the non-commissioned officer rank. However, without success,” explains Gressel. In 2019, Ramil Shamsutdinow shot dead eight of his comrades in a barracks. The recruit gave the reason that he was afraid of the Dedowchina.
For Gressel, this isn’t the only failed reform within the Russian army. “Even with the modernization of their armored vehicles, the Russian army wanted to protect the lives of individual soldiers,” says Gressel. “However, the high losses suffered by the Russian armed forces in Ukraine show that this is not the case,” explains the political scientist, who estimates the number of Russian soldiers killed at around 12,000. But it is not only the high number of casualties that cast a dark shadow over the structures within the Russian army, but also the information about the wounded. “The number of wounded is around 20,000 soldiers. But this is usually four to five times the number of dead,” explains Gressel. “Which means that the medical system within the Russian army is either catastrophic or that, above all, seriously injured soldiers are allowed to die,” Gressel speculates. Both assumptions do not reflect well on the Russian army and the way it treats its own soldiers.