Rehabilitated military prisons, weighing sentences for the strong heads, efforts on the uniforms … Faced with the influx of mobilized, the command tries to restore order to the troops. Objective: Redo the image of the army and prepare the offensives to come.
by Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent)
The decree, published in discretion on December 30, 2022, should come into force in the near future. Developed by the Ministry of Defense, he brought up to date an abandoned practice for twenty years: the installation of military prisons on the bases and places of deployment of the Russian army.
These Gaouptvakhty will be able to accommodate, without judgment, soldiers accused of serious offense to the discipline, as a refusal to fight or having left a position or a military base. The text specifies that these places of detention must be installed in containers or simple van, but not in cellars or in holes in the ground – “unless it is a question of protecting the life of soldiers”, which offer a certain room for maneuver to command.
This evocation of cellars is significant. Throughout the fall of 2022, leaks regularly reported soldiers held in underground passages in the Donetsk and Louhansk regions, sometimes several dozen men forced to pile up for weeks. the Telegram Astra chain has listed up to eleven places , supporting photographs.
The decree therefore makes it possible to regulate and supervise a practice already in force in the field, but which has moved families. It is also an additional sign that Russia installs its “special military operation” in long time and reorganizes its army.
short hair and shaved beard
Resumption in hand takes place on all fronts, including those that seem the most harmless. According to concordant information of British intelligence and officials from the Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow, the taking of function of General Valéri Guerassimov, appointed on January 12 commanding operations in Ukraine, was thus accompanied by new directives intended to limit the distribution disparate uniforms, or the use by the military of civil vehicles or personal phones.
Another of these instructions, requiring soldiers to keep short hair and shaved beard, caused fiery discussions between military experts, some seeing an unrealistic request only to guarantee “clean” images for televisions.
The command seems determined to make people forget the scenes that followed the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men in the ranks of the army, from September 21, 2022. This mobilization gave rise to fights, to Dead by accident, drinking on military bases and numerous conflicts between mobilized and officers, all filmed by thousands of phones.
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