Russian riot police who refused to fight in Ukraine were branded ‘cowards and traitors’ by their own commander.
In a voice recording released by an anti-Putin YouTube channel, the Siberian Interior Ministry commander appears to lambast his rebellious forces for mutiny.
‘Let’s call a spade a spade – weaklings, cowards and traitors,’ said the loyalist Putin commander as he threatened them with a lifetime of disgrace and harassment by the secret services.
Russian riot police have detained hundreds for participating in mass Moscow anti-war protests
The furious army boss told them of another incident where 11 elite troops from Siberian region Khakassia refused to fight in Vladimir Putin’s bloody war.
The audio was leaked by anti-Kremlin Youtubers Popular Politics, which has ties to Navalny
Up to 17,000 Russian soldiers have died in just five weeks.
‘They’ve all been fired,’ he said, and stopped from getting jobs linked to state agencies.
‘When people had to stand up for their country, for some reason they bottled it.
‘How can a SOBR man [commando unit], a professional, quit the battlefield?’
He told his own wantaway forces: ‘How do you intend to live afterwards? In two or three weeks, this crap will be over. How will you live afterwards?’
He warned the men: ‘I don’t think an officer has the right to quit the battlefield.
‘You have practically gone down the road of criminality and treason. I don’t know what is worse.’
He gave them three days to change their mind in the audio recording, for which the date of origin is uncertain.
Russia’s war casualties
Major General Andrei Kolesnikov: Commander of the 29th Combined Army Army
Major General Vitaly Gerasimov: First deputy commander of Russia’s 41st army who took part in operations in Syria and Crimea
Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky: Deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District killed during a special operation by a sniper
Major General Andrei Kolesnikov of the 29th Combined Arms Army was killed last week
Major General Vitaly Gerasimov (left) was killed last week and was the first deputy commander of Russia’s 41st army. Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky (Right), 47, was deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District
Colonel Andrei Zakharov: Killed in a Ukrainian ambush near Kyiv
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov: Leader of marine brigade killed after Ukrainian forces recaptured Chernihiv
Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov: Leader of air assault troops killed in Chernihiv
Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky: Leader of air assault troops killed in the south of Ukraine
Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov (left) and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Safronov (right) died in a battle in Chuhuiv and
Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky (left), who led air assault troops died in the south of Ukraine and Captain Alexey Glushchak (right), of the GRU intelligence service, who died fighting near Mariupol
If true, the recording shows clear opposition to the war inside Vladimir Putin’s military ranks.
‘In another three days we’ll hold another meeting, and if you fill in a report to quit – that means you’ve reported you are quitting, booted out, the end.
‘No more… I’ll say again, I’ll write a telegram, saying ‘for cowardice and lack of moral fibre’.
‘That’s what your paperwork will say.
‘Individually, go up to a puddle, look into it, and say “I’m a [expletive] coward”.
‘And the main thing is not that you’ve betrayed me, but you’ve betrayed your own ideals, your unit.’
The enraged commander told them: ‘You can take offence or not take offence, do what you like, but you are cowards.
‘Your military comrades are [expletive – fighting], and any minute they can be injured or killed, and you’ve chickened out and deserted the battlefield.’
He told the refuseniks in the six-minute rant: ‘We’ll do all we can so that your surnames are given to your schools, your colleges, places where you studied, grew up and so on.
‘So that your parents will know who they brought up.
‘You have just wiped in s*** your units now, the Novosibirsk detachment, Omsk detachment, Irkutsk detachment, written a black, a negative page in the history of your detachment.’
The commander revealed the heavy toll of the war.
‘We’ve got 445 wounded. That’s the wounded in our entire battle group. And that’s the lowest of the lot.
‘The Airborne Troops have had several times more. Dozens of times more. Dozens of times more! And other groups have loads more casualties.’
Using the banned word ‘war’, he told his troops: ‘We’re at war now.
‘Yes, you will stay alive, but you will be an outcast.
‘I say again, the main thing is what your kids will think about you.
‘Yes, they are little now, but they’ll grow up…
‘At some point they’ll learn the truth, that their dad [expletive] legged it.
‘Your personal information will be handed over to the state authorities, local administration bodies, Interior Ministry bodies, all the educational bodies where you studied.
‘All that information will be handed over at all levels, including the FSB [Federal Security Service].’
He claimed the FSB put the earlier group of deserters ‘under special control’, suggesting they could be branded Ukrainian spies.
‘God knows, maybe they are Ukrainian traitors. They are fighting, we and you are fighting, the whole state is fighting, the whole machine.
‘I think that you, colleagues, are making a very grave mistake in life.
‘Why didn’t the Covid nurses desert? Tell me.
‘Explain that to me, why were they dying in those Covid hospitals, why didn’t they [expletive] desert?
‘You have your war, or rather we do, with assault rifles, machine-guns. Are you really weaker than those girls?
‘They also had death, except it took people in a different way.
‘They also faced war, saved loads of people. And you shits, big lumps, couldn’t hack it. Traitors.’
The audio was released on the Popular Politics channel linked to jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
It follows a clip which shows brave Russian soldiers questioning their orders and condemning Moscow for ‘not know what they’re doing’ over the war.
A group of ten student soldiers in oversized helmets wielding AK-47s from the 1940s complain they’ve been ‘thrown into the s**t’.
One complains: ‘Know the truth! The Russian Ministry of Defence has no idea about us, or what we’re doing here.
‘We’ve been thrown into the s**t!’
One Pentagon document described soldiers simply parking their vehicles and walking away from the war into woods.