It is well known that Russia’s military culture is vile, brutal, and lethal. Russian military commanders in the Ukraine War are notorious for relying on “meat grinder” assaults, sending wave after wave of soldiers to attack Ukrainian positions, only to be gunned down, most often by drones.
The strategy has not changed much even in the fifth year of the war. However, commanders now often prefer sending smaller groups of soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian positions in what are often described as “suicide missions” due to drone surveillance combined with cluster artillery.
The average age of a Russian contract soldier could be as high as 50. Oftentimes, he doesn’t live past a few days once he’s sent on frontline assaults. According to a report by The Economist in May, Russia reportedly cut training for elite airborne units to 10 days, suggesting the Kremlin doesn’t intend for them to live long.
Even elite units have faced significant casualties. For example, Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade suffered catastrophic losses and was reportedly reconstituted as many as eight times during the war.
For Russian commanders, human life is cheap, and soldiers are expected to be used by whatever means necessary to make progress and report to leadership what it wants to hear. It is reminiscent of the Battle of Stalingrad, where Soviet soldiers were sent into brutal assaults with heavy casualties. In fact, on July 28, 1942, Joseph Stalin issued Order No. 227, directing the Soviet Army not to take a step back and to engage in any suicidal activity necessary to defend the homeland.
“The culture of the Russian army dates back to 1941, and it has not changed,” Mykola Melnyk, a former officer from the 47th Mechanized Brigade, told me. “There is no respect for human life, and military expediency is placed above any human values. That is why the so-called ‘battalion of cripples’ is nothing new. This existed during the Second World War, and it continues today.”
If a Russian commander is told to take a certain village, he must do whatever it takes, including expending all his soldiers. This has resulted in the frequent use of soldiers to infiltrate Ukrainian positions and plant a Russian flag, taking a video that is then sent back to Russian headquarters.
Russia has also used AI to help create fake videos showing soldiers raising flags over territory that they don’t control. The soldier is often quickly killed by Ukrainian units in the area. This is hardly an effective battlefield strategy for motivating soldiers.
“The practice also suggests manpower shortages amidst attritional warfare in which Ukraine has ground the Russian advance to a halt—the declining numbers of new recruits lead commanders to try to ‘utilize’ literally everyone, even those who are not in a physical condition to fight,” Maria Popova, an associate professor of political science at McGill University, told me. Even HIV-infected prisoners were promised treatment if they went to fight.
The quality of recruits brought into the Russian army is also often poor. Many have debts, including from gambling, while others have alcohol problems or criminal backgrounds. Some soldiers are simply lied to, being promised to serve in a drone unit, for example, but are still sent on assaults anyway.
It is also common practice to recycle wounded soldiers. According to Ukrainian military intelligence, which has intercepted recent Russian data, over 60 percent of Russian casualties are killed, and 38 percent are wounded.
“The reports surrounding so-called ‘cripple battalions’ and the recycling of wounded or medically downgraded soldiers fit into a much broader Russian military culture that prioritises mass and endurance over the welfare of individual troops,” Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who fought in Mariupol in 2022 before being captured, told me. “Russia’s system has historically valued obedience and sacrifice far more than preserving soldiers themselves.”
Those who refuse to go on a suicide mission are often humiliated and tortured. One Russian prisoner of war said that if they retreated, their commander would execute the retreating soldiers themselves. Even skilled soldiers who challenged their commanders have allegedly been sent on near-suicidal assaults.
In September 2024, drone operators Dmitry Lysakov, known as “Goodwin,” and Sergey Gritsai, known as “Ernest,” recorded a video saying their reconnaissance unit had been disbanded and its drone operators sent into infantry assaults after they criticized their commanders. Both were killed shortly afterward. Russian war correspondents have referred to these types of incidents as “serial murders of personnel, masked as meat-grinder assaults.”
Some Russian soldiers have posted rare videos of dissent, attacking even Russian President Vladimir Putin. Alexander Lunin, a 39-year-old former reconnaissance unit commander in the Sudoplatov Battalion, demanded to meet Putin and threatened mutiny over commanders sending soldiers on suicidal missions and demanding money from their own men. Lunin was arrested shortly afterward. Still, pro-war commentators have grown increasingly frustrated with the state of the Kremlin’s war effort.
Indeed, World War II-era tactics limit Russia’s ability to improve its soldiers’ combat capability. But it is also true that using mass has enabled Moscow to make gains, albeit at great cost.
In fact, Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties while relying on meat grinder assaults, and even the Russian economy is beginning to feel the manpower shortage. The true demographic losses will be felt over the coming decades, and the crackdown on foreign migrants such as Tajiks isn’t helping either.
In fighting Ukraine and trying to drag the world back into the past, Putin and his military commanders are destroying Russia’s future. The brutality of the Russian military and state is also being exported across Ukraine, as Russia illegally mobilizes ethnic Ukrainians in occupied territories to fight against fellow Ukrainians.
Europe must not allow this brutality to spread, because the Russian state will export it beyond its borders if given the opportunity.
