As Vladimir Putin seemingly dithers over the question of whether to send a further 500,000 of his citizens onto the battlefield this winter, one reason against – as reported on Coffee House – is surely a lack of basic equipment for them. Since the ‘partial mobilisation’ of up to 300,000 hapless men last September, there have been numerous reports of the army’s failure to properly kit them out.
Russian soldiers have been sent to the front with children-sized gloves, uselessly thin rubber boots and, for facial protection, paintball masks. ‘They think we’ll walk around in this sh** like in Star Wars,’ one Russian soldier jokes in clip recorded by those sent to fight in Ukraine. With a hollow laugh, he signs off sardonically to the supplier: ‘So, dear administrator of Stavropol, low bow, respect to you. We are always happy to serve.’
Many soldiers, however, seem understandably far from happy. In an article last month, Russian journalist Dmitry Borunov reported on protests breaking out in Novosibirsk, Ulyanovsk and Kazan, where the soldiers had been left with ‘rusty machine guns, without water, food and heating (even in the form of firewood).’ His article seems to confirm a report in the Guardian two months earlier, in which a 23 year-old soldier (named as ‘Vladimir’) was quoted as complaining that: ‘The army has nothing, we had to buy all our gear ourselves. I even had to paint my gun to cover the rust. It is a nightmare…Soon they’ll make us buy our own grenades.’
Dmitry Borunov, quoting instances of military discontent, stressed these were just isolated examples from a morass of ‘video, photos and audio recordings, in which the mobilised confirm the complete unpreparedness of the army and the lack of necessary uniforms, high-quality weapons and even elementary tents – and this is at the end of autumn.’
‘The army has nothing, we had to buy all our gear ourselves. I even had to paint my gun to cover the rust’
Nor are these shortages explicable by the September mobilisation and its influx of several hundred thousand new recruits. In May 2022, just a few months after the invasion began, the Moscow Times ran an article reporting that the Russian army had failed to provide the soldiers with basic kit including ‘footwear, body armour, bandages and tourniquets’. Men from the National Guard (Rosgvardia) reported being offered 200,000 roubles (£2,300) a month to fight; but the down side for these men was that an entire month’s salary would go on equipment, as a good combat vest alone cost an average of 70,000 roubles (£800). Nor, as Washington military analyst Dara Massicot pointed out, are all soldiers taking the salary-offers seriously: ‘If the government has money for cash incentives, why don’t they have money to properly supply their troops with medical kits?’
As a result, military shops and websites are currently doing a roaring trade, many selling out of basic equipment; Kommersant reports that prices for bullet-proof vests had risen by as much as 500 per cent. There have also been articles on Russian websites making detailed recommendations to new recruits about the required kit, stressing that the quality they invest in may be a matter of life and death.
Under the heading ‘Some will find it useful: we equip the soldier ourselves’ the Russian site Dzen tells soldiers what they will actually need and the best products. The recommendations come – the anonymous writer tells us – ‘from deep conviction and practical experience,’ he himself having served from the early days of the Donbas war in 2014. His own kit he assembled over three years, spending about 300,000 roubles (£3,500) (the average monthly salary in Russia is 57,000 roubles (£670), but outside Moscow and St. Petersburg substantially less).
To read such an article as a non-combatant is to enter an arcane world, full of brand-names like ‘Armada’, ‘Arsenal’, ‘Ratnik’ or ‘Gladiator’ body armour; or the Byteks ‘Authentic Soviet Winter Spetsnaz Assault Tactical Boots as worn’ – their ad tells us – by ‘Soviet KGB, FSB’ and ‘OMON’ (police units of the much-feared National Guard).
Though couched in military jargon, some of the tips given to soldiers are understandable and make perfect sense. Goggles are essential: to be ‘left without eyes in the thick of urban combat and flying pieces of masonry, plaster, glass’ can be a death sentence. Some of the most popular models also fog up terribly, we’re told, so get them with a micro-fan fitted to extract moisture, available from shooting stores.
Just as important are protective gloves, but be careful of the material they’re made from – in dry weather leather may be ‘a beautiful thing,’ but it takes too long to dry in the damp. Trigger-ready flexibility in one’s gloves is also must: to check this in the shop, ‘try to type an SMS on the display of a smartphone’ while wearing them. They should also be fitted with cuffs on the wrist-joints so that ‘with the inevitable frequent dives into a shelter (you) won’t get injuries and dislocations.’
Get knee-pads too, the writer warns recruits: much fighting now is done on all-fours, but make sure to get a uniform with space for them under the trousers. As for body armour, the most experienced soldiers ‘prefer “Smersh-AK”, because ‘pouches there are located on the sides, (so) it is convenient for crawling.’ One imagines parents of young recruits – as they desperately reach for their savings – reading these tips in horror: the grisliest of school-uniform check-lists. A further site provides advice under the heading: ‘What to take to the place of service.’ It included ‘anti-shock drugs’ and tampons for staunching the blood from bullet-wounds.
Naturally, some are profiting from recruits’ desperation, with stock bought up by black marketeers and sold at vastly inflated prices. The chairwoman of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, Gemma Beketayeva, in October posted a video on Russian social networks demanding the government fix prices for military uniforms. Detailing the recent price-rises for army kit – some of them tripling in cost almost overnight – she addressed the salesmen directly: ‘You have raised the price of military uniforms so much that it’s become scary…I’ll call everything by its proper name – Gentlemen, hucksters: you are bastards!’
Given the impossible strain on the budget of many new recruits, crowd-funding sites have sprung up to provide equipment for them. One telegram channel, RVvoenkor, is collecting ‘for the purchase of the necessary drones, walkie-talkies, night binoculars etc.’, declaring that ‘about 4 million rubles were collected in 4 days.’ Yet this is no transformative sum, 4 million rubles being about £47,000.
I do some consumer-surfing of my own, and on a typical military clothing site, ‘Ivan the Bear: Tactical and Outdoor Gear from Russia’ find the ‘SPOSN Russian Smersh AK vest set’. It includes ‘base vest, medkit pouch, 2 AK mags (12 mags total), 4 flare and 4 hand grenade pouches…And we offer a fair price for it.’
The good news for Russian soldiers is that the price, at $99 (£80), does indeed seem fair. The bad news, written underneath the product, is perhaps inevitable: ‘OUT OF STOCK.’
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