What is the Situation at the Russian Front and What Mobilized Russians are Reporting

Russian generals are 'closing gaps' at the front near Luhansk with mobilized recruits. They are sent to the front lines without a plan of action, commanders, or communication.

According to the BBC, this is how it happens. During the night, Ukrainian artillery is almost inactive; helicopters in the air have a harder time spotting the advances of Russian soldiers. Securing defensive positions in a village is a bad idea since we become easy targets during the day. It's better to dig in the woods. The maps provided often don’t show the settlements the mobilized troops are supposed to capture because the maps are still Soviet-era.

Radios are switched off; the last time they were charged was in Russia, and the batteries are running out. This is a typical situation for the Russian army, and it was under such conditions that on the night of November 1st to 2nd, four companies of mobilized men—about 500 in total from Voronezh, Sverdlovsk, and Chelyabinsk regions—were ordered by command to head to Makiyivka in the Luhansk region.

“We were moving from one forested area to another at night, and we were told we were going to the third line of defense,” said 28-year-old Dmitry Slobodchikov to the BBC. His colleague Alexey Agafonov responded, “There was no specific task set before us from the start because there was no communication as we were pushed forward.”

The commanders assured them that their company would be positioned 15 km from the front and that there would be two more lines of defense ahead. In the forested area, soldiers were ordered to dig (trench - editor's note Auroranews).

Our squad had two shovels. In the next group of 10, there were three. You had to dig with bayonets or your hands. It was necessary to dig quickly; the mobilized soldiers were brought to the positions at five in the morning, just before dawn, and the positions were shelled with fire.

“We were under heavy fire,” says Dmitry. At dawn on November 2, he and his colleagues saw many dead bodies lying around. This made them realize that Russian positions in that area had already been shelled, and no one had taken the bodies. “Without hands, without feet, without heads, but with military IDs and personal numbers on tags,” Alexey described what he saw.

Surviving soldiers had to return on foot to Krasnorechenskoye. Data from soldiers in the village was later decrypted by the military police, who then returned them to Svatovo in ‘KAMAZ’ trucks. Now, they say, none of the survivors want to return to the front line. But in the city, the mobilized are occasionally caught by military police, who forcibly return them to the ‘front line’. Svatovo itself is gradually becoming a front line as the Ukrainian Armed Forces are now just a few kilometers away from the city.