Tragic. It also indicates how dangerous a time we are in. Putin’s Russia has proven to be a paper tiger, but they still have WMDs – and not just nukes. Desperate people do desperate things.
The first batch of Russian conscripts began shipping out for Ukraine today, as Putin tries to plug holes in his armies after they were mauled at Kyiv’s hands.
Men – many of whom appeared middle-aged – were filmed waving goodbye to their families in the far-eastern province of Yakutia as they were loaded on to buses for the long journey west, to the killing fields of Donbas, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Military commissars marshaled them away less than 24 hours after Putin declared the start of Russia’s first mobilisation since the Second World War in a desperate attempt to stop his brutal invasion from collapsing.
There were even reports that some of the 1,400 activists arrested last night for protesting the move were being handed conscription papers inside police stations, despite Putin’s promise to only send those with combat experience.
Analysts and experts have given the new conscripts little chance of survival, saying they are likely to be given little or no training before being thrown on to the frontline as ‘cannon fodder’.
