1/ Hundreds of Russian soldiers near Lyman surrendered because they were starving and drinking their own urine, according to first-hand accounts from frontline soldiers. The officers are said to have taken the radios and ran away, while ordering the men not to retreat. ⬇️
2/ One of the contributors to the 'Management Speaks' Telegram channel, 'Svatovsky', a soldier who is likely to be fighting in the Svatove region north of the recently collapsed Lyman salient, has posted a rant about the terrible conditions on the front line: 3/ "Everyone already knows what a mess is going on on the line of contact right now, but do you know how many lads have already been taken prisoner?? 4/ "Not because they chickened out, but because there’s no communication, no logistics, and no drones that could at least drop some food and water to their positions. 5/ "The lads have been sitting there for days without water; many have already tasted their own piss, and I’m not exaggerating! The Germans [sic] are running riot right now and showing off their success, and do you know why? Because we’ve got no fucking supplies! 6/ "We’re getting ammunition like a bunch of fucking baboons. Fucking bullets!!! No spare parts, no drones, no jammers. 7/ "They say shoot down FPV drones with bullets, and then there's this idiot who says this equipment is fucking unnecessary, we need tanks and soldiers trained to storm the front. 8/ "I don't understand where the billions from all these funds and other bullshit that creates the appearance of fierce support for the front go. Where? Show me! I've never seen any of it on the front lines, and I'm talking about the bullshit they're throwing at us! 9/ "Why are we screwing people over? Because, five years into the war, the bigwigs up top are too scared to admit there’s absolutely nothing! They're afraid of getting their asses kicked and losing their state awards. It's easier for them to keep quiet and sit on their asses. 10/ "And the lads are paying for this with their lives every single day! I read the channels and I’m absolutely gobsmacked that most of them have turned into fucking cowards who are afraid to tell the truth, and only talk shit about each other instead. 11/ "It’s also all the rage right now to go on and on about how much we’re earning, but nobody actually does the maths to work out how much money goes on just to scrape by until the next day. 12/ "On communications, on kit, on all the stuff they were supposed to give us but didn’t – do you have any idea how much we’re chipping in and scraping together ourselves? 13/ "Now tell me, you so-called ‘interested parties’ who write all that rubbish in private messages – are you really that thick?" 14/ Svatovsky's account is corroborated by some of the surrendered Russian soldiers from the Lyman salient. In a video published by Ukraine's Third Army Corps, the men say that their officers ran away in the face of the Ukrainian advance and left them to fend for themselves. 15/ According to one soldier, there was an opportunity for the men to retreat, but it wasn't taken. Instead, they were ordered to hold their ground and form a "circular defence." 16/ One junior officer who remained and surrendered, Captain Third Rank Alexander Geennadievich Manankov, says: "We had no water at our positions. We had to drink water from puddles, we had to drink our own urine."
17/ Another soldier says that "we had one person there who died from dehydration." Manankov says that they had no food, and "had to eat tree bark and grass." The men made broth from nettles. 18/ "We were starving here," one man says. He ate properly for the first time in a month and a half when he was taken captive. 19/ According to Manankov, the Russians holding the Lyman salient also didn't have medicine for the wounded. At least three of the wounded died because there wasn't anything to treat them with. 20/ Russian warbloggers have described how Ukraine used drones intensively to cut off Russian logistics near Lyman. It appears from the soldiers' accounts that the collapse of the salient was due as much as anything else to a localised collapse of the Russian logistics. /end Sources: 🔹 t.me 🔹 t.me