The nearly 200,000 Russian combat troops presently invading Ukraine, killing and terrorizing its people – including women and children – and destroying its infrastructure, schools, orphanages, hospitals and homes are part of a powerful military force equipped with the most advanced and horrific array of weapons, with a nuclear threat sinisterly lurking in the background.
This force is commanded by Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and led by ruthless generals, sycophants whose loyalty is not to a Constitution, not to a democracy, but rather to an ideology — most of all, to a deranged, paranoid dictator, a war criminal.
While much of this force consists of professional officers and contract soldiers (kontraktniki), a large number of them are poorly trained, poorly treated, poorly paid, poorly informed, low morale conscripts.
These are the soldiers who, even before their deployment, already experienced social and economic inequalities when compared to treatment, advancement opportunities and pay of their “contract” comrades.
These are the soldiers who, by presidential decree, are not allowed to serve outside Russia’s borders, but whose status was forcibly changed to contract status on the eve of the Ukraine invasion in order to circumvent the decree and, worst of all whose presence in Ukraine is denied by the Kremlin.
These are the soldiers who “had no idea they were being sent to invade Ukraine,” who were kept in the dark about a war they are now being asked to sacrifice their lives for.
Yet these are the young men who are now bearing the brunt of the misery and casualties as the Russian army grinds forward in Ukraine.
These are the soldiers who are now surrendering or being captured, who are seen begging for food, who are abandoning or sabotaging their tanks and trucks when they see the chaos, when they understand the real evil objective of their mission.
Then there are the even less fortunate ones whose shot-up bodies can be seen strewn across roads and bridges, abandoned by their comrades. Bodies that may never be returned to their loved ones because they may be buried in mass or “evaporated” in mobile crematoriums in order “to conceal [Russia’s] soldiers’ deaths from the world.”
One of these soldiers is said to have texted his family shortly before his death:
There is a real war raging here. I am afraid. We are bombing all of the cities, together. Even targeting civilians. We were told that they would welcome us and they are falling under our armored vehicles, throwing themselves under the wheels and not allowing us to pass. They call us fascists, Mama, this is so hard.
These are boys with names such as Aleksandr. Yuri, and Dmitry — young sons, grandsons, brothers who have been forced by the Russian despot to inflict death and destruction on innocent human beings.
Many are still teenagers as perhaps was the soldier to whom may have belonged the charred teddy bear CNN reporter Matthew Chance discovered on a bridge outside Kyiv among the charred, still-smoldering remains of a Russian armored vehicle.
After shooting this footage, Chance’s camera operator briefly filmed the body of another Russian soldier abandoned by his comrades on that bridge in Ukraine.
These are some of the Russian soldiers fighting and dying in Ukraine. For whom? For what?
Perhaps Volodymyr Zelensky, the heroic president of Ukraine, put it best when he said, referring to the Russian troops, “These are not warriors of a superpower. These are confused children who have been used.”
