'Let Someone Whack You': Russian Troops Are Now Deliberately Wounding Themselves to Get Out of

[highplainsdem]

Source: Daily Beast

‘Let Someone Whack You’: Russian Troops Are Now Deliberately Wounding Themselves to Get Out of Putin’s War


-snip-

“I had a commander… who shot himself in the leg just to get out of here. And that was in the very beginning! What is there to talk about? He served in Chechnya.”

-snip-

The tapped phone chat was not the only one to suggest Russian troops are taking desperate measures to escape the war. In a similar recording released by Ukrainian intelligence Friday, a woman identified as the wife of a Russian soldier urges him to “fall off a tank.”

“There’s no way out,” she says. “Otherwise you will be there until September… They will not swap you out, because everyone is refusing.”

-snip-

His wife argues a “fall from a tank” is just one option. “You just don’t need to shoot yourself in the leg, because who the fuck knows how that would end. Or let someone whack you on your side,” she says, so that his kidneys would get injured. “I don’t fucking know! Because you’d be able to go home straight from the hospital.”

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-troops-are-now-deliberately-wounding-themselves-to-get-out-of-putins-war/

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Link to tweet

[Turbineguy]

1. Instructions

[paleotn]

9. Never gets old.

[Warpy]

12. I love that video. I especially love that the guy posted the original video himself

as a caution to other fools who play Wild West with loaded guns.

The problem is powder burns from close range shots, Russian doctors will spot those every time and the poor sap will be out of the war but in a Russian prison.

Better to stick your non dominant hand or maybe a foot out of a foxhole or trench and let Ukraine do the job.

[Eyeball_Kid]

2. My Vietnam vet brother tells a story...

He was among a group of mine sweepers near the Cambodian border who played a "hot potato" game of sorts with blasting caps when they had some spare time in base camp. If the cap exploded in a soldier's hands, he'd lose a finger or two, but would get sent to hospital for a few weeks to recover. Those few weeks in recovery, in exchange for a lost finger or hand, was seen as worth the injury.

War is horrific, no matter who is fighting in it.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. Umm... from the same story:

The purported soldier appears to seriously consider the proposal as he recalls how he and about 300 other troops took control of a village two days earlier, when he says a “fucker of a battalion commander” ordered all the men to toss grenades into the basements of local homes, without checking who was inside first.

“It’s good that they didn’t fucking toss the grenades, because when the guys went in there were four little kids sitting there.”

[PatSeg]

4. K&R

[greenjar_01]

5. Literally happens in every war

[Grokenstein]

6. "Great Russian Bear" myth is finished.

Back in the '70s, there was a story in one of DC's WWII comics that always stuck with me: "And Fear Crippled Andy Payne," in which a very young naval seaman, traumatized by all the deaths he has witnessed, mutilates his own hand with a meat cleaver to get out. (The final page of the comic can be found at the link. It's not graphic--'70s comic books under the Code, after all--but I can't directly link to the image without it automatically triggering a download. Just Crtl-F and search for "Payne." )

[IronLionZion]

7. "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on."

[TeamProg]

8. 'Whack' is an onamotopea, so I guess it can be a Russian word. n/t

[paleotn]

10. The flip side is.....

few Russian ground pounders are going to push things tactically on the battlefield for fear of needlessly being maimed or end up KIA. In fact, they're more apt to give ground to save their own skins. Russian morale and esprit de corps has been running on fumes from the start. Those are the things that overcome the natural urge to "get the hell out of here!!" when things get really hot. The things that win battles as much as bullets and shells. I've heard the Russians have been shooting their own skulkers and stragglers. That can only work to a point. Stalin finally figured that out.

[Joinfortmill]

11. Putin's days are numbered.

[FakeNoose]

13. And yet, some Russian POWs are saying that their commanders are shooting the wounded

... perhaps because there are no mobile medical facilities to treat them.
So shooting oneself in the leg doesn't get you an automatic trip home.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216694180

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/uq18zl/russian_pow_tell_stories_of_how_their_commanders/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Translation:

1: The guys are telling us how their own wounded men would get finished off

🇺🇦: what do you mean “finished off”?

1: just like that, a wounded soldier is laying there and the commander of the battalion just shoots him with the gun and that’s all.

1: young guy, wounded laying on the ground. Commander asks him “can you walk?” No? He just took out his gun and shot him.

2: not even just one. the important part is it wasn’t just one. The commander shot 4-5 people this way. young guys…

3: they could have been saved, transported somewhere, receive some help, but he simply just killed them

🇺🇦: and why did he do this?

3: I don’t know.

[TomWilm]

14. They are actually free to go home, since this is not a "war" :)

Russian troops are saying no, knowing that punishment is light while Russia is not technically at war.

Dmitri told his commanders that he refused to rejoin the invasion. “They were furious. But they eventually calmed down because there wasn’t much they could do,” he said.

He was soon transferred to Belgorod, a Russian city close to the border with Ukraine, where he has been stationed since. “I have served for five years in the army. I will serve my remaining time and then I am out of here,” he said. “We aren’t officially in a state of war, so they could not force me to go.”

This is a result of the Kremlin’s political decision not to formally declare war on Ukraine. Under Russian military rules, troops who refuse to fight in Ukraine can face dismissal but cannot be prosecuted, said Mikhail Benyash, a lawyer who has been advising soldiers who choose that option.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/they-were-furious-the-russian-soldiers-refusing-to-fight-in-ukraine