Death on Dnipro

Panic, uproar and depression of Russian military bloggers

This Substack is gradually evolving into a „digest of Russian Telegram channels”, but I feel it’s actually OK. The other stuff you can easily find elsewhere, but I sense an acute deficit of understanding how “Russian Russians” perceive the war.

Recently there is a lot of panic and uproar about the Ukrainian bridgehead on the other side of Dnipro river in vicinity of Antonovsky bridge. On the one hand, there is no serious threat for Russians here - it’s 2 km of marshes to the next town (Aleshky) and it’s not possible for Ukrainians to advance further. There is a sort of consensus on this for the analysts on both sides.

Russians are mostly angry because this bridgehead seems easy to eliminate. One Iskander or one FAB-500 should take care of it. This leads Russians into a sinusoidal pattern of euphoria and depression - one day it’s “finally! all Ukrainians killed by our Iskander / aviation / TOS-1!”, next day it’s “but they are still there!”.

Still from the video of the death of Russian soldiers (via Telegram channel “Narodnyi Front”)

One video posted by Ukrainian sources caused particular uproar. I am intentionally posting only one screenshot, taken from and censored and redacted version from Russian source. The original footage is horrible, you can try to find it on your own, if you really want to see how one dies from a direct grenade hit. In fairly good resolution.

“They had only 18 seconds to start the boat engine and save themselves. But it didn’t start” - that’s the caption given by Russian Telegram Channel “Narodnyi Front” (“National Front”).

Russians superimposed a clock on the footage. At this screenshot, it’s showing 00:00:57, meaning the two men in the boat will be dead in 17 seconds.

The whole footage depicts a failed attempt to ambush the Ukrainian bridgehead from the rear. Since it’s all filmed by Ukrainian drone, we know that all the Russian in this boat are doomed well before they even managed to reach the shore.

The drone flies above the boat and drops the first grenade into the boat. All Russians, dead and alive, are thrown off the boat by the explosion.

Two manage to scramble back. One of them is frantically trying to start the engine. Even if you perceive them as enemies, it’s still painful to watch.

Just before 00:18:00, another grenade is incoming, killing the last couple of survivors. Then Ukrainian squad is approaching, delivering final grenades just to be sure there are no survivors.

Why did it happen at all? Who gave this braindead order? Why our army is using an unreliable, civilian boat? Why don't we have a regular river flotilla after 16 months of war, where river Dnipro plays an important role from day one?

Russian TG channels keep asking these questions. Some of them are actually being answered - according to Russian military bloggers, this is yet another example of the style of commanding of general Oleg Leontyevich Makarevich.

Makarevich with Putin, april 2023. © kremlin . ru (via Wikipedia), CC BY 4.0

Apparently, it is not the first braindead order he issued on this section of the front. Previously, he sent Russian soldiers to be killed by Russian minefield. Other soldiers were sent to be decimated by Ukrainian artillery taking advantage of the higher ground of the Kherson cliff. All that according to various Russian military bloggers.

If it was indeed the Russian side blowing up the Kakhovka dam - he would be responsible for that, too. And actually he seems like the kind of person willing to ignore such humanitarian rubbish as “but sir, civilian people will die on our side!”. Even if someone dared to say it to him, he would respond with “so what?”, just as for the hypothetical “but sir, you are sending our boys to our own minefield!”.

This discussion led to an unprecedented level of hate towards the Russian military bloggers from their very own readers. “Why do you mock our troops? Why do you slander our commanders? And above all, why do you lie? There is a great flotilla of super-duper ultra-modern speedboats with no match in the world, we saw the pictures”!

A collection of pictures allegedly showing the Dnipro flotilla (via Telegram channel of Michman Ptichkin)

Military blogger Michman Ptichkin, who appears to be well informed in everything Russian that floats (or sinks), dissected these pictures in a lengthy analysis. He basically wrote what was publicly declared (all riverboats were delivered last autumn) and what actually happened (few riverboats were delivered this spring, but not to the actual frontline troops).

Alexander Kots, who doubles as a journalist of “Komsomolskaya Pravda” and a blogger (under his own name, that’s brave!), delivers a good comment. “That’s the genre classic (“klassika zhanra”): to show that everything is there. Three beautiful boats, apparently scrubbed clean for the photo”.

Via Telegram channel of Alexander Kots

I don’t think this can be repeated often enough: in Russia, there is a huge difference between the official announcement with photographs, and what happens ACTUALLY. To some extent this is probably true for every country, but there’s a reason Russian language developed a whole palette of idioms and expressions denoting this discrepancy.

Many people - especially pro-Russian minded people in the West - fall for it. They say: look at this picture, it’s T-14 Armata, the best tank in the world. And here is a hypersonic missile that cannot be intercepted (and for some reason, we don’t use it to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure!). And there is Su-57, a fighter plane so ultra-turbo-stealth nobody ever saw it in action!

If someone from that crowd pays me a visit (hello!), I have another picture for them. It’s from Andrey Medvedev, quoting another blogger, “Poddubny Z-O-V” (he did not put these letters into his name because he is anti-war, believe me).

Everyone who still believes in the Russian power should see this picture. These are actual wheels of a military truck from an artillery unit - according to Russian military blogger Andrey Medvedev (via his Telegram channel)

“My friend Evgeny Poddubny asked a very good question. Who are the people, who until this very day are allowed to sell the decommissioned military equipment? Who is still - when the war goes on for a year and a half - allowing them to run the scheme of writing off equipment at scrap value and resell it for the full market price?”.

Medvedev is linking Poddubny, who described one particular situation encountered by his frontline friends. Their unit could not get new tires for their trucks by official channels. Why? “Don’t even ask, it’s the eternal story that cannot be described without obscene vocabulary” (my literal translation).

Poddubny bought the tires for his friends, but since brand new military-grade tires cost “millions”, he bought used ones from “the crooks from the Russian pseudo-reserves” (literally: “baryg iz psevdo rosreservov”). It seems that he bought them from more or less the same source the tires should be simply delivered to the unit that needs them.

“If this was an isolated case, then OK - but this is wilderness. And the same goes with the boats, the same wilderness you have to deal with”, ends Poddubny.

And Medvedev is ending this with an appeal: join the National Front initiative to collect the money to buy our soldiers a boat! Because the shiny ones from the photo-session are still not with the troops - if someone is using them, it’s probably the same guy who sold the stolen tires, took the money, went for the well-deserved vacation. He’s fishing in Lake Baykal, sporting his shiny brand new super-duper speedboat.