The pro-Kremlin milblogger Yegor Guzenko, known as “Thirteenth,” posted videos online on Monday where he complained that Russia’s ability to conduct combat operations in many areas of the battlefield was being constrained by shortages of artillery ammunition.
According to Guzenko, this is a recent phenomenon caused by the destruction of ammunition depots by Ukrainian drone attacks in Toropets in the Tver region and Tikhoretsk. in Krasnodar Krai in the middle of September and said the attacks were continuing.
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He alleged the issue is particularly affecting those areas of the front where “active assault operations” are taking place.
“The 98th Airborne Division has this problem, as do a number of other units. I will not name them, because there are too many,” he said.
He added that the problem was getting worse and rationing of artillery shells was being imposed on some units.
He complained that, even so, Russian troops were still being forced to assault Ukrainian positions without artillery support. He went on to imply that there was something “criminal” happening among Russia’s commanders. In echoes of the complaints made by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former leader of the Wagner PMC in May last year, Guzenko opined:
“But even if this happened, if some of the warehouses were destroyed, it doesn’t mean that our factories suddenly stopped. The factories work every day – day and night. This ammunition goes somewhere.” The milblogger then asked, “Where does this ammunition go? Why is there so few of it for the troops?”
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According to an Estonian intelligence assessment the strike by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Toropets depot on Sept. 18, could have destroyed as much as two months’ worth of Russian artillery ammunition along with Iskander and Tochka-U, 122mm rockets and aerial bombs.
In early September, Guzenko published a series of videos, now deleted, in which he harshly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, his government and military commanders.
In them, he said Putin was a coward for not starting his special military operation in 2014 and that if he had the war would have been done and dusted long ago.
“If 10 years ago one old man hadn’t s**t himself and had gone the honest way [declaring war] in 2014, then all this bulls**t wouldn’t have happened and so many guys wouldn’t have died,” he said.
Guzenko said that Russia had been “captured by traitors… sitting in the Kremlin.” He said that Moscow was putting “inconvenient” citizens such as Igor Girkin (Strelkov), a former commander of separatist formations in Donbass behind bars after being convicted of “extremism.”
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