Last year’s mobilization revealed a large level of organizational problems in the Russian armed forces. Some problems have been solved, some not. Among them are “lost” servicemen who cannot find their unit.
Due to the confusion that has arisen in the border areas and even deep in the rear, there are entire groups of fighters roaming in search of their military units. Someone is forced to even get to the permanent deployment points to simply find out where their unit is now.
The most unfortunate thing is that those who find themselves in such a situation are often mistakenly registered as deserters. It comes to the point of absurdity: a person can travel on the front line for weeks to find her unit, but at the same time he is listed as a fugitive in his military registration and enlistment office.
All the fault of the bureaucracy you would say in Italy and it is also said in Moscow. In general there is confusion with management and organization as well as insufficient interaction between structures.
Many mobilized have been assigned to formations created from scratch. Due to the chaotic process of forming new units, the commander could not even understand who exactly he was subordinate to, and the fighters could only know the number of their battalion to the maximum.
Due to the loss of control, the hastily assembled units once at the front and hit fell apart. After leaving the battlefield, the military didn’t know exactly where to turn. Someone got to the Urals, the Volga region and even the Far East, but even there they could not find information – some units are at the front in full force, and there is simply no one to answer the question about their location.
The same problem occurs when you get injured. Soldiers are sometimes released from medical facilities without prescriptions, which is why they are forced to search for their own units on their own.
The most acute problem is with the corps of the DPR and the LPR due to the not fully resolved status. Servicemen faced with such problems are forced to knock on the thresholds of state institutions in search of at least some information, but most often they receive the answer “Go to Donetsk / Luhansk and find out there.”
The situation is aggravated by the order of the General Staff to free the military hospitals of the Republics for the wounded from the PMCs, as a result of which the flow of discharged without prescriptions has only increased.
On February 1, President Vladimir Putin, hearing of the troubles at the front from the wives and mothers of the fighters he meets regularly, asked his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to do something. The Minister thought then, after having consulted with the newly promoted generals, of giving life to a new structure: “Now special depots are being created in the military districts, where they will begin to collect all the “lost”. In particular, in the Western Military District such a unit was formed on the basis of military unit 30616 in Pakino in the Vladimir region”. Be law in the social sphere.
With the help of the commandant’s offices and military registration and enlistment offices, they will be sent to units for further service, or discharged and placed in the reserve. This will help fighters not only return to their duty station, but also avoid desertion charges while searching for their unit.
However, the matter has not been resolved even if such measures will eliminate the consequences still remain of the lost. To completely solve the problem, it is necessary to get rid of the organizational chaos, when the newly formed battalions “hang in the air” and it is not clear who they obey, and the discharged wounded are put outside the gates of hospitals.
Graziella Giangiulio
