'They're just meat': Russia deploys punishment battalions in echo of Stalin
'They're just meat': Russia deploys punishment battalions in echo of Stalin
Drunk recruits, insubordinate soldiers and convicts are among hundreds of military and civilian offenders pressed into Russian penal units known as "Storm-Z" squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year. Few live to tell their tale.
Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts.
They're among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who've been pressed into Russian penal units known as "Storm-Z" squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units.
Few live to tell their tale, the people said.
"Storm fighters, they're just meat," said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in May and June.
He said he'd given medical treatment to a group of six or seven wounded Storm-Z fighters on the battlefield, disobeying an order from a commander - whose name he didn't know - to leave the men. He said he didn't know why the commander gave the order, but claimed that it typified how Storm-Z fighters were considered of lesser value than ordinary troops by officers.
They'll probably be instituting destroyer battalions soon.
They already did that a few months into the war. They split off a few military units and detailed them to keep the other troop in line. They find and kill deserters, shoot units that disobey orders to advance, and generally do the sorts of things the secret police do.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The soldier, who requested anonymity because he feared prosecution in Russia for publicly discussing the war, said he had sympathy for the men's plight: "If the commandants catch anyone with the smell of alcohol on their breath, then they immediately send them to the Storm squads."
The penal squads, each about 100-150 strong and embedded within regular army units, have typically been sent to the most exposed parts of the front and often sustain heavy losses, according to Reuters interviews with the people, who identified at least five Storm-Z teams fighting to repel a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east and south.
The deployment of such squads marks a departure for Russia in Ukraine: while the Wagner mercenary group - now being disbanded after a June mutiny - sent convicts to fight on the frontline, the Storm-Z units come under the direct command of the defence ministry.
There is historical precedent for military offenders being pressed into fighting units; in 1942, when the Red Army was retreating from a Nazi advance, Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered soldiers who panicked or left their posts into "punishment battalions" deployed to the most dangerous parts of the front, according to a decree he signed.
Artyom Shchikin, a 29-year-old from the Mordovia region in central Russia, was serving a two-year sentence for robbery handed down in December 2021 when defence ministry recruiters came to his jail asking if inmates wanted to go and fight in Ukraine, according to court records and two of his relatives.
By May this year, Shchikin was assigned to a penal unit within the 291st Guards Motorised Rifle Regiment and deployed to the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv's forces are trying to break through Russian defences, the relatives added.
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Americans got away with their racist war with much less casualties yet we don’t really accurately keep track of 20 years of suicides do we?
🤷🤷🏻♀️
Not sure what you're trying to say here... did you copy the wrong line from the script?
I mean we are good at racism, war, and suicide. Other countries are, too, so I'm not sure why that makes us special.