Putin threatens another mutiny by troops freezing in -25C without food

Vladimir Putin faces the threat of mutiny among his troops as they endure the harsh conditions of his war against Ukraine.

Conscripts in Russia’s Novosibirsk region have asked their wives and sisters to protest to the president on their behalf.

In a video obtained by Astra Media, a man describes facing freezing temperatures and little medical care or food.

“Now it is -25 degrees. We have to live in the ice here. At the same time, our leadership intimidates us,” he said.

“They will not provide medical aid or rations until we take these positions.

“We want the military prosecutor, the FSB [security service] and Vladimir Putin personally to investigate this video speech.”

While the troops view Putin as a benign dictator, it is clear that he is using his mobilized men as cannon fodder.

“We believe that such actions by the command undermine the combat capability of our military. Under such conditions, the men here will just freeze and get sick.

‘Who’s going to fight? We won’t even be able to fight… Commanders inform us that they are out of supplies…

“They tell us directly that the money [for fighting equipment and rations] was just stolen. And now they demand that we move here…

“Our company will die here before we can even meet the enemy.”

They appealed to women in their hometowns for help, insisting that they would not refuse to fight but not “go to the front lines and sit dumb in the trenches waiting for the mortars to arrive”.

And now it’s freezing. The outside temperature is -20°C to -25°C… So all hope is on you women, sisters. Spread this information as widely as possible…

“We have very little time. You are our only hope.”

The men are convinced they will come, in Soviet jargon. Charge 200 – dead – or 300 wounded.

In a complaint video, they said: “These are mobilized men from the Novosibirsk region of the war zone.

“They send us straight to the front, they get us out of there one of two ways or with cargo 200 [dead] or 300 [wounded].

“There’s nothing we can do here. Men sit in the trenches for months… waiting for the shelling.”

In another video, men from the 428th regiment in the Republic of Bashkortostan say they endure 300 assaults a day with no military training.

They said they were forced to buy their own military equipment and food, and had to pay for vehicles themselves to transport dead and wounded comrades.

“We were called up on September 26, 2022. We got our jobs from the start [was] to protect facilities in the liberated areas,” the men said.

“We didn’t have proper military training… We paid for our own communications and surveillance equipment. And we paid for vehicles to transport the wounded and the dead.

‘We [face] more than 300 strikes per day on our positions. We had two dead, more than a dozen wounded.’

The soldiers demanded a review of combat missions and deployment positions as they were called upon during mobilization for territorial defense and not front-line combat.

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