Experts with whom The Washington Post spoke draw attention to the fact that Russian soldiers, who should have resisted the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the counteroffensive in the Kursk region, simply surrender en masse to Ukrainian forces.
Points of attention
- Observations by journalists and experts confirm that Russian soldiers surrender en masse in the Kursk region without trying to resist the Armed Forces.
- Russian conscripts who were captured claim lack of experience and poor training.
- Putin created a new problem for himself against the background of the Kursk operation of the Armed Forces.
The Russian military has to take charge of its main duty
According to American journalists, Ukrainian soldiers captured more than 240 Russian soldiers.
What is important to understand is that this number can actually be much higher.
These are hundreds of enemy soldiers who should have stopped the advance of the Armed Forces, but did not even try to do so.
Most of them call themselves conscripts and assure that they should not go into battle even to defend their own territory.
Journalists are sure that this approach creates a politically sensitive problem for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
I haven't seen a video of Russian soldiers surrendering en masse for a long time. After seeing these videos, I felt that these soldiers have no experience of fighting inside Ukraine, said Dara Masikot, a senior researcher at the Russia and Eurasia Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Putin himself created a new problem for the Kremlin
Journalists draw attention to the fact that in some videos the prisoners call themselves conscripts — men aged 18 to 30.
What is important to understand is that such conscripts do not receive salaries and are poorly trained.
The illegitimate president of the Russian Federation promised that they would not be sent to combat operations, although Russian law allows it if they have completed four months of basic training.
The presence of conscripts in hostilities undermines the social contract between Russian families and the government, which has been run by Putin since 1999, — emphasizes Masikot.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia has yet specified how many Russian conscripts were captured during the Kursk operation.
