Russian Troops Deliver Bad News About Army's Morale

A small group of Russian soldiers in Ukraine recently released a video appeal in which they describe their morale as being "below floor level."

The soldiers recorded the message while stationed in the Kherson region. Their appeal was addressed directly to the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, an organization formed in 1989 that's dedicated to responding to allegations of mistreatment of Russian soldiers.

On Friday, WarTranslated, an independent media project that translates materials about the war into English, shared the video—which could not be independently verified by Newsweek—on X (formerly Twitter). The "battered and mistreated" troops complained in the clip about being sent to fight despite not being properly trained, WarTranslated said.

Reports have frequently emerged of Moscow's military suffering from low morale ever since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Such reports have seemingly increased in recent months, and WarTranslated has posted previous videos of Russian soldiers refusing to follow orders to return to the front lines.

Friday's video opens with a speaker identifying himself as the commander of the unit and giving his name as Lieutenant Konstantin Podobaev. He said his unit was mobilized from various towns in the Moscow region and sent to a Russian-occupied city in Ukraine "without going through any military training."

Podobaev said they mostly did manual work during a 10-month stay in the city, which he described as "simply digging, sawing, building, carrying and other jobs instead of preparing."

"There was no medical or combat training whatsoever," he emphasized, according to WarTranslated.

Nonetheless, Podobaev said his unit was sent to "the first line of defense." He said he had informed a major general who delivered the deployment orders that they hadn't been trained and lacked necessary equipment.

"In the end, they sent us without proper training, without air support, artillery support [and] without heavy equipment," Podobaev, according to WarTranslated.

He added that their current location doesn't have logistics, transport, ammunition, medicine or sufficient provisions.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense via email for comment.

"We're taking heavy losses. Nearly 40 percent of personnel is lost," Podobaev said. "Morale of the troops is now below floor level."

The commander then motioned to what appeared to be six men standing around him. "Here are all the guys that are left from my platoon," he said.

Podobaev concluded the video by saying: "I'm asking for your help, so your relatives, husbands, sons [and] brothers could return home safe and alive. And my guys could return home too."