A 34-year-old Russian paratrooper named Pavel Filatyev has written a brutally essential account of his time within the Russian military main as much as and in the course of the invasion of Ukraine. The 141-page account may be learn right here in Russian and, primarily based on the prolonged Twitter thread under by army historian Chris Owen, reads one thing like a cross between Catch-22 and The Good Soldier Svejk.
1/ A 34-year-old former Russian paratrooper, Pavel Filatyev, has printed a outstanding in-depth account of his experiences of the Ukraine conflict. He served with the Feodosia-based 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment and fought in southern Ukraine for 2 months. A 🧵 follows. pic.twitter.com/upGQAejb12
— ChrisO (@ChrisO_wiki) August 17, 2022
Amongst different issues, Filatyev particulars squalid, unlivable circumstances all through primary coaching, created and compounded by forms and ineptitude at each degree:
I needed to run like a homeless from one barracks to a different, on the lookout for a mattress to sleep in, till I discovered a spot to hire at my very own expense
There may be not sufficient meals for everybody, the potatoes within the soup are uncooked… the bread is stale
We rise up at 5 within the morning, spend three hours lined up and ready for the truck, we lastly go, we arrive at 12, line up, stand, the commanders on the vary don’t like the way in which some piece of paper is stuffed out, the foremost tears up the sheet and throws it. He yells with hysterical cries that there can be no firing due to this…
Per The Guardian, yesterday, Filatyev goes on to write down about his expertise of the taking of Kherson:
Like savages, we ate all the things there: oats, porridge, jam, honey, espresso … We didn’t give a rattling about something, we’d already been pushed to the restrict. Most had spent a month within the fields with no trace of consolation, a bathe or regular meals.
What a wild state you possibly can drive folks to by not giving any thought to the truth that they should sleep, eat and wash. All the things round gave us a vile feeling; like wretches we had been simply making an attempt to outlive.
Filatyev, in fact, printed this account at nice private danger, and has since fled Russia. However earlier than doing so, he was interviewed in a Moscow cafe:
I’m not afraid to struggle in conflict. However I have to really feel justice, to grasp that what I’m doing is correct. And I consider that that is all failing not solely as a result of the federal government has stolen all the things, however as a result of we, Russians, don’t really feel that what we’re doing is correct.
I’m simply scared of what occurs subsequent. What’s going to we pay for [total victory]? Who can be left in our nation? … For myself I mentioned that it is a private tragedy. As a result of what have we change into? And the way can it get any worse?
I very a lot hope this memoir is already on the way in which to a full translation in a number of languages.
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