Mutiny Is Brewing in the Russian Army

Growing numbers of Russian troops are rejecting orders from their superiors as Moscow's forces suffer huge losses in offensives in Ukraine, according to independent Russian news sources.

Russian-language Telegram channel Astra said that every day it gets messages from the families of soldiers who have been detained in occupied regions of Ukraine, as anecdotes abound of a lack of artillery, food, water and poor command.

Reports of growing dissent and localized insubordination, sporadic as they have been so far, are likely to irk the Kremlin, which just months ago was targeted in a full-blown mutiny. It was led by the late Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who masterminded the mercenaries' "March on Moscow".

While the mutiny petered out as quickly as it began, Prigozhin himself was killed in an airplane crash and his troops jailed, sent home or absorbed into the Russian military, fears of a repeat have lingered.

This month, Russia launched an offensive around Avdiivka, the gateway to the city of Donetsk, which has been occupied by Russia and its proxy forces since 2014.

Russian forces have reportedly suffered large losses of troops and equipment during heavy fighting around this part of the front and in neighboring Kupiansk, leading to small-scale revolts and disobedience among Russian troops, the channel said.

Astra reported that there are at least 16 places in the occupied regions of Ukraine where Russian soldiers have been detained for insubordination, the largest at Zaitseve. Their phones have been confiscated and their contact with the outside world cut off. Astra said it knows of 173 soldiers who had been detained but says this number is "the tip of the iceberg."

The troops in question are then transported to training grounds in Russia, where they are re-formed into units and sent to front line hot spots to carry out assaults.

It said that one group of around 50 troops from the 15th Motorized Rifle Regiment was detained in Rozsypne, in Ukraine's Donetsk region and taken to a training ground in Russia's Kursk region. They were told they would be sent to join the assault on Avdiivka, according to the lawyer of one of the men who challenged the legality of the detention.

The wife of one man told Astra her mobilized husband had refused to take part in an offensive on Makiivka, the scene of a deadly Ukrainian attack in January. The mother of another soldier said that Russian troops are "depressed" and "don't know what to do."

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, there have been numerous reports of low morale among Russian troops, particularly following Vladimir Putin's partial mobilization in September 2022, amid accounts of poor training and equipment, as well as problems with command.

The latest reports, which were shared on the X (formerly Twitter) account of Chris O'Wiki, a military analyst who posts about the war, follow reports this week of so-called "torture pits" at two Russian military training grounds to punish rule-breaking troops.

Independent Russian news outlet Important Stories and the Conflict Intelligence Team, an open-source investigative group, cited those who had attended the Prudboy training camp in the Volgograd Oblast and the Totsky military training ground in the Orenburg Oblast.

A deserter said that misbehaving soldiers, mostly those who were in trouble for drinking alcohol, were beaten by military police, kept in the pits for up to a week, and were fed only once a day.

"People who came back from there didn't mess around anymore," said the soldier, named Sergei, in the report. This contained satellite imagery of what it said were the pits, two dark holes in the earth dug between April and August 2023.

Newsweek has emailed the Russian defense ministry for comment.

Update 10/26/23, 10:18 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further information and clarification.