From today's WaPo:
“I am now being reproached for driving people into depression with my news,” military correspondent for Komsomlskaya Pravda newspaper, Alexander Kots, wrote Tuesday on his Telegram blog which has more than 600,000 subscribers. “Well, there will be no good news in the near future neither from the Kherson front, nor from now Luhansk.”
“In many sectors the fatigue has set in after a long offensive period, during which large territories have been liberated,” Kots added. “But there is no longer any strength left to hold them.”
Videos posted by Russian independent outlet Astra show pro-Russian fighters from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic camping out in the open field and complaining that Russian commanders have had abandoned them while withdrawing.
In the videos, a man in worn-out fatigues said the Russian losses in the area were huge, with only 193 survivors and a few pieces of heavy equipment left from their initial convoy. The Washington Post could not independently verify the video clips.
Another popular Russian war blogger, Rybar with nearly a million followers, posted maps showing how the Russian hold on the Kherson region shrank dramatically in the span of just a few hours. Losing the west bank of the Dnieper River to Ukrainian control would be “an immediate danger” for remaining Russian units in the area, Rybar wrote.
As Russia was retreating on the battlefield, Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree formally refusing any negotiations with Putin — a largely symbolic move to show Kyiv’s confidence in how things are unfolding on the battlefield.
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On Tuesday, Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced that over 200,000 men had been sent to the Russian Armed Forces in the two weeks since Putin announced the mobilization on Sept. 21.
At the same time, the interior minister in neighboring Kazakhstan, Marat Akhmetzhanov, said that an equal number of Russians — 200,000 — had crossed that country border since Sept. 21, with most apparently seeking to flee the mobilization or out of fear that Putin would soon impose martial law and bar international travel. Tens of thousands more Russians have fled to other neighboring countries including Georgia and Finland.
The botched mobilization has led to severe recriminations in Russia with some governors expressing fury over men who are too old or otherwise unqualified being wrongly called to duty.
Meanwhile. Russian defense minister Shoigu tried to answer a torrent of recent reports on Russian social media from mobilized men and their family members complaining about the lack of appropriate equipment in military units, which forced some newly-minted soldiers to go seek protective gear themselves.
“Officials have been instructed to provide the mobilized with the necessary sets of clothing and other equipment,” Shoigu said, adding that 80 training grounds across Russia were now accepting newly mobilized soldiers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/03/marina-ovsyannikova-russia-house-arrest-ukraine/
But there were signs that Russia was not able to properly equip its recruits.
Prices of bulletproof vests have dramatically increased in Russia over the past two weeks, with some stores hiking up the prices by more than ten times, local media reported. In total, a soldier looking to purchase a full uniform appropriate for fighting in Ukraine have to spend roughly $3,000 out of pocket, the Baza news outlet reported.
Ilyushina reported from Riga, Latvia; Khrushudyan from Dnipro, Ukraine; and Rauhala from Brussels. Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga contributed to this report.