Russian Soldiers From 70th Regiment Refuse Orders To Fight Ukraine

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Multiple Russian units have evidently refused to fight in Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war against Ukraine, according to reports from sources including The Kyiv Independent. Information on this matter originates from Ukraine’s military intelligence service. According to those intel authorities, Russian leaders have sent agents of the state security service that succeeded the KGB into the ranks of Russian military units where these refusals were recorded.

It’s multiple units within Russia’s 70th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment that are at issue here. Per Ukrainian intel authorities, the Federal Security Service arm of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army “decided to fill the units of the 70th Regiment with their freelance agents and informants.” The point of these security agents’ and informants’ presence is to “identify and neutralize the initiators of the refusal for participation in the war,” Ukraine said. The regiment where rebellion has evidently been recorded is apparently under the purview of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army. And the security agents’ presence isn’t the only means of Russian leadership retaliating against refusals to fight: the “most active servicemen demanding their return to the territory of Russia, hoping for their imminent death, have been sent to the most dangerous section of the front,” according to revelations from Ukraine.

Russian forces are believed to have sustained substantial losses in both equipment and personnel throughout the fighting in Ukraine. In a single, recent confrontation between Ukraine and Russia around the Siverskyi Donets River, which runs through the eastern portions of Ukraine, Russian forces apparently lost dozens of military vehicles while over 400 Russian troops were killed or wounded. As the now months-long conflict has dragged on, Russia has also lost an array of generals and other high-ranking officers, in addition to losing the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, which was named after the Russian capital (that’s a transliteration of the Russian word for Moscow) and sunk after a strike by Ukraine. Recently, Ukrainian forces have also scored substantial battlefield successes in the area of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Throughout the last roughly two weeks, 23 settlements in the Kharkiv area have been liberated, according to Ukrainian Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Hromov. These advances have helped ease the pressure on Kharkiv.

Ukraine says they’ve wiped out 28,500 Russian soldiers, over 1,200 tanks, more than 3,000 armored combat vehicles, and more. Some of the equipment affected by Ukrainian defensive maneuvers has apparently been recovered in working order. Per The Wall Street Journal, NATO estimated all the way back in March that “up to 40,000 Russian troops have been killed, wounded, taken prisoner or are missing in Ukraine,” a figure including between 7,000 and 15,000 troops who’d been killed. Going forward, Russians are continuing to attempt to seize the entirety of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine, although their attacks aren’t isolated to just those areas. U.K. authorities believe the Russian lieutenant general who failed at taking Kharkiv has been fired by Putin. Russian forces failed earlier in the war at taking Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, prior to further focusing their ground efforts elsewhere.