[way]

https://au.yahoo.com/news/russian-milita...43962.html


A former army military translator who served in Syria, he realised the horror of the invasion on the first day when some of his old comrades had already died, he said.

“I learned that the situation was simply horrific,” he said.

“The leadership became so insane that it simply threw its own army for slaughter.

“Officers, contract [soldiers], conscripts.”

Official denials that conscripts were serving in the war were untrue, he said.

“Putin and [defence minister Sergei] Shoigu threw their poorly prepared, badly-equipped army to slaughter…in a full-scale military conflict in Europe.”

He said the middle and lower ranks had been against the war.

[way]

He spoke amid estimates that the Russian war dead is now in the tens of thousands.

His own experience of the army showed “widespread sycophancy, corruption, and theft”, he said.

“Corruption has gone from being a local phenomenon to a global one under Shoigu.

“It starts from the very bottom: at the level of the brigade, the unit - when the commander filches millions in bonuses from the budget.”