For months now, there have been reports about the ultra-low morale among Russian troops in Ukraine, but a strange turn of events in Kherson is a startling reminder that things could always get worse.
At the very onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers could be seen abandoning their posts and/or surrendering at a rapid pace. Those who ended up in the custody of the Ukrainian military we filmed calling their mothers and crying, all while telling their new captors that they had been deceived into participating in the war.
Then came the reports of Kremlin troops attempting to arrange sham marriages to get out of the war, before finally scavenging Ukrainian ammo and shooting themselves in the legs for the medical leave.
Any way you slice it, Moscow’s in trouble…especially now that separate factions of the Russian military have been shooting and killing one another.
When Viktor Zolotov, director of the Russian National Guard, briefed his boss, President Vladimir Putin, on Tuesday on the status of military operations in Ukraine, one remark in particular stood out.
“I especially want to emphasize that we feel the support of the population in the liberated territories,” Zolotov told a stone-faced Putin.
In reality, Russia has been struggling to rally the support of its own troops, according to internal government documents obtained exclusively by Yahoo News that detail drunken acts of insubordination six months into Putin’s invasion.
That’s right: The Russians are now purposefully shooting at one another.
The news comes on the heels of reports stating the Russian manpower is growing terribly low, and just as Ukraine begins their counterattack to retake the East.
