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30 June 2024

Fragging, Desertions, And Other Problems Mounting For Russian Invaders – Analysis

Paul Goble

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his entourage, the Russians fighting in Ukraine are an army of heroes who enjoy almost unanimous domestic support. Neither of those claims is true (see EDM, April 1). The Russian forces in Ukraine are now riddled with fragging, desertions, and corruption—all signs of the kind of degradation that threatens unit cohesion as well as command and control.

Russians at home, despite government polls claiming overwhelming popular support for the invasion forces, are in fact increasingly skeptical of the Kremlin’s compulsion to scrape the bottom of the barrel to fill the depleted army ranks and pay increasingly larger bonuses to convince Russian military-age men to sign up. (For background, see EDM, July 13, 2023.)

In another sign of trouble, the Putin regime has been forced to ask Russians to turn in their privately owned guns to help the invasion forces. Furthermore, and perhaps even more significant as far as the future is concerned, Russians are increasingly alarmed by serious crimes committed by veterans of the war against Ukraine, many of whom were recruited out of prison (see EDM, October 25, 2023, January 19). More Russians are demanding that the government take action against them despite Putin’s insistence that these veterans will form the future Russian elite (see EDM, March 13).

The most dramatic of these problems is the rise of “fragging” among the Russian occupation forces. The term, which refers to attacks on officers by soldiers under their command, became notorious first among US military units in Vietnam and then within Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Novaya Gazeta Europa, a Russian media outlet based in Latvia, has now collected data that indicates fragging is taking place in Russian military units in Ukraine (Novaya Gazeta Europa, June 14).

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