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Russian forces in Zaporizhia have been at the front line continuously for nine months, wrote a military blogger.
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Putin had promised that Russians who volunteered to fight in Ukraine would enjoy long vacations and job security.
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Russian forces have “no personnel available to replace them”, the Institute for the Study of War said.
A Russian military blogger said Russian forces in the city of Zaporizhia had been on the front lines continuously since last year, another indication that Vladimir Putin’s forces lacked replacements, military analysts said.
The blogger claimed on Telegram that Russian forces that were mobilized in September have been fighting since October without any holidays, according to an Institute for the Study of War assessment on Thursday.
The blogger quoted in the ISW assessment said on Telegram that being on the front line for nine months had a huge impact on the soldiers.
While some Russian commanders tried to give soldiers a break, they later faced retaliation from senior officers, the blogger wrote.
Russian forces “have not been able to get these mobilized personnel out of these positions because there are no personnel available to replace them,” the ISW assessment said, noting that the report of the Frontlines “supports the ISW’s previous assessment that Russian forces likely lack combat-ready reserves.”
Being stuck on the front lines can have a huge impact on an army’s fighting ability.
The U.S. military determined during World War II that the “breaking point for a soldier on the front line was between 60 and 240 days, depending on the intensity and frequency of combat,” according to an article published by the National World War 2 Museum. .
Russian troops stuck on the front since October are said to have fought for more than 240 days.
The grueling weather on the front lines appears to violate Putin’s promise reported in Newsweek that Russians who volunteered to fight in Ukraine would be guaranteed long vacations and job security.
The psychological toll of Putin’s war in Ukraine on Russian forces has been widely reported.
A Russian inmate told the New York Times last month that he was thinking of signing up to become an army construction worker when a government official recruited him from prison. Instead, he was sent to the front lines in eastern Ukraine and captured by Ukrainian forces days later.
Other Russian soldiers said they were “fuckin’ fools like little children” and had no idea they were being sent to a war zone.
In an audio recording previously obtained by The Times, a Russian soldier told his mother during a phone conversation that “no one told us we were going to war. They told us a day before we left.”
Read the original article on Business Insider