Russian volunteer soldier lashes out at "botoxed guy"
Eyewitness accounts are rare… This one is particularly harsh. Precious and poignant. Words denounce the war “according to Putin”.
It's the Russian and independent media iStories, relayed by Le Grand Continent, that allows us to enter the mind of a Russian soldier, an anonymous witness of an imperial war, led by a Putin without any boundaries. He spent almost a year in Ukraine before fleeing this “absurd” fight. All the elements collected suggest that the man “was very close to the front line”.
Like many volunteers, the Russian soldier, 11 months after being sent to Ukraine fled the front line with the help of Go By The Forest, a Russian association that was created in February 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory. Its objective is to provide psychological support and temporary housing to Russian fighters who, for whatever reason, decide to leave the front.
“I joined the army in August 2022 as a volunteer. I signed up as a short-term contract with an initial duration of four months. In the end, I served for almost a year: 11 months of war, 7 of which were in combat, where the enemy is close and shelling is constant,” the volunteer reports. While the Ministry of Defense offers volunteers contracts ranging from 200,000 to 250,000 rubles per month, the initial promises are, in reality, far from being respected: soliers face late or no annual leave, they stay much longer than expected on the front lines, late payments, no support for families in the event of death, etc. “I knew that this war had started because a botoxed guy thought he was an emperor. You may wonder how I can consider myself a liberal and go to war, how this corresponds to my views, but 99% of those who were with me were volunteers, and they did not hesitate to call Putin a big c....,” the man continues. Patriots are shadows that linger in the rear, and die as soon as the first shell arrives. Men who fight for months all want to get out and never come back!
The soldier also raises the enormous imposture that is the Russian army, supposed to be the most powerful army. Very poorly trained, the volunteers are sent to war without much knowledge of the terrain, only with a few theoretical notions in mind. “The Ministry of Defense likes to talk about our powerful army, but in reality, they are royally sh...!”
(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: le Grand Continent - Picture: by Kremlin.ru via Wikicommons under license Creative commons CC-BY-4.0)
